Oscar-winning American actor and Thirty Seconds From Mars frontman Jared Leto has been accused of sexual misconduct by nine women.
In a report published by Air Mail, multiple women accused the 53-year-old star of Fight Club, Requiem For A Dream, Dallas Buyers Club and Suicide Squad of inappropriate behaviour.
The allegations date back to the early 2000s, with one woman calling it “an open secret” that he texted sexual remarks to teenage models.
Allegations against Leto emerged last month, when DJ Allie Teilz shared an old Facebook post, written in 2012, on her Instagram Story.
“Youre [sic] not really in L.A. until Jared Leto tries to force himself on you backstage… In a kilt.. And a snow hat. I was assaulted and traumatized by this creep when I was 17,” she wrote. In separate story, she added: “He knew my age and didn’t care. What he did was predatory, terrifying and unacceptable.”
One woman told the publication that in 2006, when she was 16-years-old, Leto approached her outside a Los Angeles café. She claimed Leto was sat with fellow actor Ashley Olsen – who was then 19 – and he had grabbed her arm.
“I looked down and it was Jared Leto,” she told Air Mail, adding: “We had a quick conversation, and he got my number.” She went on to say that Leto called her home a few days later, recalling: “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?”
“And the conversations turned sexual,” she continued. “He’d ask things like: ‘Have you ever had a boyfriend? Have you ever sucked a dick?’”
Model Laura La Rue came forward with similar claims, saying that when she was 16-years-old in 2008, she was at an event in a private residence in Beverly Hills where Leto was “watching her so intensely”.
“He asked how old I was. I said, ‘I’m 16. How old are you?’” La Rue told Air Mail. Leto, who was 36 at the time, then reportedly asked for her number. The two began an email correspondence, which resulted in her visiting Leto’s home in April 2009, the outlet alleges.
“I remember him teasing me the whole time I was there,” La Rue said, adding: “He was flirting with me. He’d lean in close, then pull away, like it was a game.”
She described a separate visit when she was 17 years old, where she alleged Leto walked out of a room completely naked. “He just walked out, dick out, like it was normal… I thought maybe this was just what adult men do,” she said.
Another woman who spoke to the outlet said that she and Leto began texting while she was still underage. She alleged he would ask her inappropriate questions during her visits to his house, including “Do any of the little boys you hang out with fuck you?”
The woman alleged that once, when she was 18, Leto had “suddenly pulled his penis out and started masturbating”. She told Air Mail: “He walked over, grabbed my hand, and put it on him. He leaned in and said: ‘I want you to spit on it.’”
A representative of Leto has “expressly denied” the multiple accusations reported in the Air Mail exposé, saying the claims were “demonstrably false”.
This is not the first time that Leto’s behaviour has been questioned and called out.
Similar claims were made in 2005, when The New York Post shared a story with the opening line: “Jared Leto likes ’em young” after he had been spotted with Olsen and Lindsay Lohan. At the time, sources told the publication he had been “aggressively pursuing many of the teen models shacked up at the Maritime Hotel”.
In 2018, Metro reported on a Twitter post made by Dylan Sprouse, who is married to model Barbara Palvin. The post read: “Yo @JaredLeto now that you’ve slid into the DMs of every female model aged 18–25, what would you say your success rate is?”
Guardians Of The Galaxy and Superman director James Gunn replied to Sprouse’s tweet at the time, saying: “He starts at 18 on the internet?”
