Jared Leto Sexual Misconduct Allegations: Multiple Women Speak Out

0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The singer and actor Jared Leto has been accused of criminal sexual misconduct by four women, according to a new documentary.

In the BBC documentary, Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret , one woman claimed she was sexually assaulted by Leto in a motel at the age of 17.

Another woman said she was 17 when she had sex with Leto in California, where the age of consent is 18. She claimed that when the issue of age was raised, Leto dismissed concerns about it.

A third woman claimed the actor threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19 after she was left alone in a hotel room with him.

Meanwhile, a fourth woman said Leto groomed her when she was 16, alleging that he used his celebrity status to make sexually explicit calls, and suggest that they have sex on at least one occasion.

Newsweek contacted Leto for comment by email outside of regular working hours. The BBC said that Leto did not respond to repeated attempts to contact him regarding the allegations.

The allegations are detailed in Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret , a BBC documentary featuring interviews with 10 women, nine of whom are speaking publicly for the first time. According to the BBC, the women said they encountered Leto between 2002 and 2016, when the actor and musician was in his 30s and 40s.

The broadcaster said it corroborated aspects of several women's accounts through friends and family members who were told about the alleged incidents at the time.

Among those interviewed was a woman identified as Isabel, who alleged she met Leto while working at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas in 2002, when she was 17. She told the documentary that she later agreed to meet him after work at what she believed was his hotel, but said the address turned out to be a "dingy motel."

"I had viewed this event as, I was a stupid girl that did something stupid, did something dumb, and so this bad thing happened," Isabel said in the documentary. "But of course it didn't because I did something dumb and so it's on me."

The documentary also features accounts from other women who said they encountered Leto at concerts, after-parties and through the music and modeling industries over a period spanning more than a decade. Several said they only later came to view those encounters differently as adults.

Two of the women in the film recalled being asked to call Leto "daddy," while another said that he would refer to her as "little girl."

One woman alleged that Leto later contacted her about signing a non-disclosure agreement. The BBC said it reviewed the NDA and related communications, though she said she ultimately declined to sign it.

Leto rose to prominence as an actor in the 1990s and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Dallas Buyers Club in 2014. He has also appeared in films including Fight Club , Blade Runner 2049 and Suicide Squad .

Alongside his acting career, Leto is the frontman of the rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars, which he formed with his brother Shannon Leto in 1998. The band continues to tour internationally and is scheduled to return to the U.K. and Europe next year.

Allegations concerning Leto's interactions with young women have circulated for decades.

During its investigation, the BBC said it identified more than 120 allegations posted online relating to behavior women said they witnessed, experienced or heard about involving the actor and musician, with some dating back to the early 2000s.

In 2005, an article in the New York Post contained allegations that Leto had approached teenage and underage girls at a New York hotel and exchanged text messages with them, but the issue did not return to the spotlight until 2025 when Air Mail published an investigation featuring accounts from nine women who accused Leto of sexual impropriety, including allegations that some of his interactions involved teenagers. Leto denied those allegations through a representative.

The documentary also includes interviews with two former crew members who worked with Thirty Seconds to Mars.

The men said some staff members were uncomfortable with the age of girls and young women who were brought into the band's orbit.

One former crew member, identified by the BBC as "Simon," said Leto frequently communicated with young women while the band was recording and recalled women regularly visiting a house where the group was working.

"There would probably typically on a given day be about two girls that might stop by," Simon said.

Simon described one encounter involving a girl he remembered as appearing "very young looking" and said she was dropped off by her parents before spending time with Leto. He recalled that after she left a bedroom and waited for her parents to pick her up, "the feeling in the air, it felt like shame and embarrassment."

Another former crew member, identified as "Brad," told the documentary that requests for female models to receive VIP tickets during arena tours came directly from Leto. Brad said "no-one enjoyed watching that or being involved with that. I think everyone thought that the age gap was way too big."

Reflecting on allegations that surfaced publicly in recent years, Simon told the BBC that accounts from some women felt familiar to what he had witnessed while working with the band. "It's uncanny," he said. "The things she says about how he would behave with her. It's upsetting. It's disturbing. It completely brings back memories of what I witnessed."

Leto's most recent major film role was in Masters of the Universe , the big-budget adaptation of the Mattel franchise released earlier this year, in which he played the villain Skeletor.

Despite being one of the movie's biggest stars, Leto was notably absent from much of the publicity campaign surrounding the film's release.

The relatively quiet ...