Shannon Leto (; born March 9, 1970) is an American musician best known as the drummer of rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars. He co-founded the group in 1998 in Los Angeles, California, with his younger brother Jared. Their debut album, 30 Seconds to Mars (2002), was released to positive reviews but only to limited success. The band achieved worldwide fame with the release of their second album A Beautiful Lie (2005). Their following releases, This Is War (2009) and Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams (2013), received further critical and commercial success. As of September 2014, the band has sold over 15 million albums worldwide. Leto has worked on several side projects during his career, including a collaboration with Antoine Becks, a recording with the short-lived supergroup The Wondergirls, and performing on occasional dates with Street Drum Corps. His creative contribution to music has received praise from musicians and critics. He is noted for his dynamic drumming style and his energetic live performances. Early life Shannon Leto was born in Bossier City, Louisiana, to Constance Leto (née Metrejon). His mother has Cajun ancestry. "Leto" is a stepfather's surname. His parents divorced when he was a child, and he and his younger brother Jared lived with their mother and their maternal grandparents William Lee Metrejon and Ruby Russell. His father remarried and committed suicide when Shannon was ten. Leto moved frequently with his family from his native Louisiana to different cities around the country. He has two younger half-brothers from his father's second marriage. Constance joined the hippie movement and encouraged her sons to get involved in the arts. Leto became interested in percussion from the moment he and his brother started playing music together at early age, and his models were artists of many different mediums. "I come from a pretty artistic family," he explained, "There were canvases and paint everywhere, instruments, and all sorts of stuff. It just kind of made sense. I started playing on pots and pans at a very early age, so I just kind of flowed into it. It was just a natural progression." He received his first drum kit when he was ten years old and began teaching himself, developing his own style. Leto has described his adolescence as a troubled time, in which he used drugs and dropped out of school. He said, "I was in a mess, I felt I didn't belong