‘Morbius’ opens in theaters on April 1st, bringing Jared Leto’s living vampire to the big screen. It’s a role that comes with quite the major transformation as Leto’s character Dr. Michael Morbius goes from suffering from a rare blood disease to gaining superhuman abilities and a thirst for blood after he attempts to cure himself.

   As shown from the teasers and trailers, it’s a big shift on all fronts for the character and it’s the transformations that attracted Leto to the role in the first place. Leto spoke with ComicBook.com and described the role and its transformation as being “perfectly suited” for his interests. “It was a little bit of both,”

   Leto answered when asked if it was a mental or physical transformation that was the most challenging to overcome. “I mean, it’s kinda like a chicken and the egg there, you know, the physical informs the mental and the mental informs the physical and this was just the perfect opportunity for me not only to… you know, I got a chance to bring this character to the big screen for the first time. And I have to say, it’s an absolute honor to do that.”

   He continued, “It’s hared and harder to find a character that hasn’t been portrayed before. And the fact that this character is coming to screens for the very first time April 1st, I’m incredibly exited about that. And the other thing that I loved is that you have this transformative performance inside of this big marvel movie and that there were kind of three characters in one here, it was perfectly suited for me and what I’m interested in.”

   Leto said that he spent a lot of time with the art of the character in comics and it informed his take on the character a great deal.

   “What I loved a lot is the artwork,” Leto said. “And that was really inspiring because of course you have the writers and the stories, the comics, but I feel like the artists too created their own stories with the visuals. And I really spent a lot of time with the art of Morbius and there’s just some beautiful art all the was back to the 60’s and that really inspired and informed the character quite a bit.”