Jared Leto confirmed to play Andy Warhol in biopic from The Social Network producer

The Oscar-winning actor is known for his method approach to playing The Joker in Suicide Squad

Jared Leto (L) has been cast as Andy Warhol (R) in an upcoming film adaptation of his biography (Rex Features)

Jared Leto is swapping The Joker's dead rats and anal beads for soup cans and Coke bottles after being cast as Andy Warhol in an upcoming biopic.

The Oscar-winning actor has been confirmed to play the openly gay 21st century pop artist and rock band manager whose iconic paintings are among the most expensive ever sold.

Leto will also produce the film, currently titled Warhol, with The Social Network’s Michael De Luca, while The Wolf of Wall Street’s Terence Winter is writing a script based on Warhol: The Biography by Victor Bockris.

Warhol began his career in the Sixties, turning on celebrities and consumerism for fierce artistic critique. He soon became a celebrity in his own right, with his Factory studio a hip hangout on the New York cultural scene. He came close to death after another artist shot him there in 1968 but he survived and later became a regular of Manhattan’s Studio 54 nightclub along with the likes of Mick Jagger, Elton John, Debbie Harry and Freddie Mercury. Warhol died aged 58 in 1987 from a post-operative cardiac arrest after mentoring a new generation of young artists.

Warhol’s colourful life has been tackled on the silver screen before, most memorably by late singer Davie Bowie in Basquiat and Guy Pearce in Factory Girl.

Leto’s portrayal of a trans woman living with AIDS in 2014’s Dallas Buyers Club won him critical acclaim and an Oscar but angered the LGBT community as another example of a lead gay role going to a straight actor. He has acknowledged the current diversity problems in Hollywood but is likely to receive further criticism for taking the part of Warhol, who lived publicly as a homosexual before the gay liberation movement.

Leto is currently working on Denis Villeneuve’s much-hyped Blade Runner sequel, due in cinemas next October. Further casting details and a release date for Warhol are as-yet-unknown.