When Russell Brand was credibly accused of multiple instances of sexual assault, it was one of the least surprising moments of the past decade. So too with Jared Leto, who falls in the same Russell Brand category of “It’s Been An Open Secret For Years.” The only surprising part is that it’s taken THIS long for someone to do a serious exposé on Leto’s decades of skeevy, predatory behavior. The year is 2025, and #MeToo has finally come for Jared Leto. Air Mail published the exposé, in which nine women describe their stories of being preyed upon by Leto. Most of the women were just girls when Leto approached them and began grooming them – his type, it seems, is “girls around the age of 16.” You can read the full Air Mail piece here. Here’s an excerpt:
But the theatrics, the robes, the rituals, and the guru-posturing at this and other Mars-hosted events haven’t fully been able to obscure decades’ worth of rumors about Leto behaving inappropriately with younger women in his orbit. I spoke with nine of these women, who revealed a darker side to the 53-year-old actor.
On September 12, 2005, the New York Post published an item on Leto, who had, a few years earlier, appeared opposite Jennifer Connelly in the movie Requiem for a Dream. The story opened with the blunt line: “Jared Leto likes ’em young.”
Though Leto, 33 years old at the time, had been spotted around New York with Ashley Olsen and Lindsay Lohan—who were both of age by this point—the New York Post alleged that he was more interested in groups of teenage models staying at the Maritime Hotel. “Girls from IMG, Elite, Next and Women are staying there, and Jared has been hitting on all of them,” an anonymous source told the paper. “He’s a serial texter. He is constantly texting these other 16- and 17-year-old girls. It’s really kind of creepy.” (A representative for Leto calls the New York Post item “recycled tabloid fodder and demonstrably false.”)
Twenty years later, the women I spoke to say Leto’s alleged past behavior was not a phase but rather part of a long-standing pattern—one that was and continues to be widely known in some circles and, generally, quietly accepted. “It’s been an open secret for a long time,” one of the women tells me.
Another woman I spoke to, a model and music producer, says she was 16 when, in 2006, Leto approached her at Urth Caffé in Los Angeles, then a popular destination for Hollywood agents and middle-school girls. The woman’s mother was outside waiting for a table. As the woman pushed through the crowd to go to the bathroom, Leto—seated nearby with Olsen, 19, whom he was rumored to be dating at the time—grabbed her arm.
“I looked down and it was Jared Leto,” the woman says. “We had a quick conversation, and he got my number.” A few days later, Leto called her home in the middle of the night. “I don’t know if he was on drugs or what … It was the weirdest, grossest voice…. [But] for me, it’s Jared, you know?” (A representative for Leto says he “has not had a drink or used drugs in over 35 years.”)
That night, Leto was hosting a party at his house in Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon neighborhood organized by Brent Bolthouse, a nightlife promoter behind the then infamous Neon Carnival parties—lavish, invitation-only affairs held at the Desert International Horse Park, in Thermal, during Coachella.
Leto invited the woman, but she declined. “I didn’t even have a driver’s license,” she says. Still, over the next three weeks, the calls kept coming. “Always at one, two, three A.M.,” she remembers. “And the conversations turned sexual. He’d ask things like, ‘Have you ever had a boyfriend? Have you ever sucked a d–k?’” The woman says the experience left her shaken. She was in rehab at the time and discussed it with her counselor. “He changed—his voice, the way he talked. It scared me,” she says. “That was the first time I thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s not just in movies.’” (The woman’s mother, who she says overheard one of their phone calls, has confirmed her story.)
I’ll admit that I couldn’t even get through the whole piece, I was so disgusted. I believe all of these women, and I believe Leto has done even worse to even more girls and women. Leto and his people knew this was coming – I would imagine that his team has probably had their statements and blanket denials ready since 2017. I bet some of those people are even shocked that it’s taken this long for any of this to come out. This feels like the tip of the iceberg. I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt I am.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
