Latest news with #30SecondsToMars
The Age
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable': The accusations faced by Jared Leto
Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said: 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18 - 25, what would you say your success rate is.' In a deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (where his brother Shannon plays drums). They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and – well, there's always a downside – a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events – and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (the camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Self-styled cult leader Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as, 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant died when Leto was eight. His mother Constance had by then moved back in with her parents. She later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though, and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So Called Life. 'He went full Joker' It's probably as well Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyer's Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in David Ayer's Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker (he returned to the character in a new scene filmed for Zack Snyder's four-hour Justice League). The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith – an actor whom we can now safely say is no stranger to controversy – was weirded out. 'First we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bang on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. To walk with a cane – as Morbius does in the film – he 'studied with real cane users'. 'I remember fearing for this guy's spine,' said co-star Adria Arjona. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple' He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that dramatically reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyer's Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he informed the Guardian. 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone/18kg] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when he learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Uncertain future And then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire – a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV+'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $US90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars, albeit with diminishing returns. London's O2 was half empty when the band played there last year – though an ongoing tour of Europe this summer is sold out. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused, with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. As with so much else in Leto's career, the commercial prospects of these projects are now uncertain. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar whizz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original). 'Ready?' says Bridges in the latest promo. 'There's no going back'. Disney may come to regret that line.
Sydney Morning Herald
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable': The accusations faced by Jared Leto
Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said: 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18 - 25, what would you say your success rate is.' In a deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (where his brother Shannon plays drums). They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and – well, there's always a downside – a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events – and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (the camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Self-styled cult leader Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as, 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant died when Leto was eight. His mother Constance had by then moved back in with her parents. She later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though, and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So Called Life. 'He went full Joker' It's probably as well Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyer's Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in David Ayer's Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker (he returned to the character in a new scene filmed for Zack Snyder's four-hour Justice League). The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith – an actor whom we can now safely say is no stranger to controversy – was weirded out. 'First we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bang on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. To walk with a cane – as Morbius does in the film – he 'studied with real cane users'. 'I remember fearing for this guy's spine,' said co-star Adria Arjona. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple' He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that dramatically reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyer's Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he informed the Guardian. 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone/18kg] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when he learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Uncertain future And then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire – a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV+'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $US90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars, albeit with diminishing returns. London's O2 was half empty when the band played there last year – though an ongoing tour of Europe this summer is sold out. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused, with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. As with so much else in Leto's career, the commercial prospects of these projects are now uncertain. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar whizz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original). 'Ready?' says Bridges in the latest promo. 'There's no going back'. Disney may come to regret that line.
Irish Independent
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable' – why Jared Leto has become Disney's $200m problem
An Oscar-winning actor and frontman of the band 30 Seconds To Mars, Leto, has been accused by nine women of inappropriate behaviour – including claims his conduct was 'predatory, terrifying and unacceptable'. Leto has 'expressly denied' the accusations reported by Air Mail. They include an assertion by one woman that Leto approached her in 2006 when she was 16 and he was 35. She says Leto, who was seated in an LA cafe with then-19-year-old actor Ashley Olsen, grabbed the woman by the arm. 'I looked down, and it was Jared Leto,' she said, adding: 'We had a quick conversation, and he got my number.' We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review your details and accept them to load the content She continued that Leto called her home a few days later. '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?..the conversations turned sexual. He'd ask things like: 'Have you ever had a boyfriend? Have you ever sucked a d***?'' (Leto 'has not had a drink or used drugs in over 35 years', the actor's representative told Air Mail.) These and other accusations make for grisly reading – another woman recalls how, once, when she was 18, Leto 'suddenly pulled his penis out and started masturbating'. With Leto insisting on his innocence, Disney executives will surely thinking towards damage limitation ahead of Tron: Ares. The film's plot has been kept largely under wraps, but given that Leto is to play the eponymous artificial intelligence 'Ares', removing him from the film would be no easy task. Following the failure of a previous Tron spin-off − 2010's Tron: Legacy − the studio may wish it could just hit AI Overview Ctrl+Alt+Delete on the entire franchise. The stakes are high for Disney as it tries to move beyond a succession of flops, including the disastrous Snow White live-action reboot which is estimated to have left the Magic Kingdom $115 million in the red. Factoring in associated marketing costs, it is believed Tron: Ares would need to generate $400 million just to break even. But who would want to see the third movie in a fading series whose title character is played by potential persona non grata, Jared Leto? Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said, 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18-25, what would you say your success rate is.' ADVERTISEMENT Learn more In a since deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken the Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (in which his brother Shannon plays drums). There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine, that may have been a turning point for me They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events − and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (The camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as: 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant would die by suicide when Leto was eight. His mother Constance later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine, that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So-Called Life. It's probably as well that Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyers Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker. The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction to Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith was weirded out. 'First,we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bang on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent… everyone was in awe Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyers Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he told the Guardian. ' 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when the Oscar-winning actor learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire − a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV +'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar wiz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original).
Telegraph
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
‘Predatory, terrifying and unacceptable': The problem with Jared Leto
Disney, we have a problem. Five months out from the release of Tron: Ares, the studio's $200 million sequel to the beloved Eighties sci-fi movie, one of the project's stars, Jared Leto, has been engulfed in a #MeToo scandal. An Oscar-winning actor and frontman of the band 30 Seconds To Mars, Leto, has been accused by nine women of inappropriate behaviour – including claims his conduct was 'predatory, terrifying and unacceptable'. Leto has 'expressly denied' the accusations reported by Air Mail. They include an assertion by one woman that Leto approached her in 2006 when she was 16 and he was 35. She says Leto, who was seated in an LA cafe with then-19-year-old actor Ashley Olsen, grabbed the woman by the arm. 'I looked down, and it was Jared Leto,' she said, adding: 'We had a quick conversation, and he got my number.' 'The conversations turned sexual' She continued that Leto called her home a few days later. '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?..the conversations turned sexual. He'd ask things like: 'Have you ever had a boyfriend? Have you ever sucked a d---?'' (Leto 'has not had a drink or used drugs in over 35 years,' the actor's representative told Air Mail.) These and other accusations make for grisly reading – another woman recalls how, once, when she was 18, Leto 'suddenly pulled his penis out and started masturbating'. With Leto insisting on his innocence, it remains to be seen how the controversy will play out. Still, Disney executives will surely thinking towards damage limitation ahead of Tron: Ares. The film's plot has been kept largely under wraps, but given that Leto is to play the eponymous artificial intelligence 'Ares', removing him from the film would be no easy task. Following the failure of a previous Tron spin-off – 2010's Tron: Legacy – the studio may wish it could just hit AI Overview Ctrl+Alt+Delete on the entire franchise. The stakes are high for Disney as it tries to move beyond a succession of flops, including the disastrous Snow White live-action reboot which is estimated to have left the Magic Kingdom $115 million in the red. Factoring in associated marketing costs, it is believed Tron: Ares would need to generate $400 million just to break even. But who would want to see the third movie in a fading series whose title character is played by potential persona non grata, Jared Leto? Even before these latest accusations, there were question marks around the now 53-year-old actor. In 2018, Disney actor Dylan Spouse tagged Jared Leto in a tweet and said, 'Yo @JaredLeto now that you've slid into the dm's of every female model aged 18 - 25, what would you say your success rate is.' In a deleted post, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn added, 'he starts at 18 on the internet?' Leto appears not to have taken the Gunn's shade to heart. Twelve months later, in 2019, he was photographed in Croatia, modelling white robes and a Jesus-like beard, surrounded by fans of 30 Seconds To Mars (where his brother Shannon plays drums). They had accompanied him to Central Europe for the latest in a series of 'summer camps', where activities include yoga, cooking classes and – well, there's always a downside – a 30 Seconds To Mars performance. Dressing up was part of the fun at these events – and Leto was the trend-setter with his Christ-like outfit (The camps were discontinued after the pandemic). Just so nobody missed what he was going for, the band's social media wrote: 'Yes, this is a cult #MarsIsland.' Self-styled cult leader Leto may have styled himself as the head of a cult, but his childhood reads closer to a Southern Gothic novel. He was born in impoverished Bossier City, Louisiana, where the major local industry was a trio of riverside casinos. His father, Tony Bryant, abandoned the family when he was an infant. Leto recalled his father's last words as, 'I'll see you, kid, just going to the store to get a carton of milk'. Bryant would die by suicide when Leto was eight. His mother Constance had by then moved back in with her parents. She later married Carl Leto, Jared's adoptive father. However, there was little stability in Leto's life. By 16, he was taking drugs and paying for his habit with theft. 'There was a moment involving a gun and some cocaine, that may have been a turning point for me. I knew it wasn't good,' he would say. He turned himself around, though and, aged 22, had his big break as Jordan Catalano in the teen drama My So Called Life. 'He went full Joker' It's probably as well Leto and his 30 Seconds To Mars 'Echelon' – as fans call themselves – have a strong bond. Cinema has proven to be a less supportive environment. In 2014, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for playing a transgender character in Dallas Buyer's Club. However, his campaign to carve out a space in blockbusters came unstuck with his disastrous turn in David Ayer's Suicide Squad in 2016. The problem wasn't Leto on screen – he was perfectly fine as a sleazy Joker (he returned to the character in a new scene filmed for Zack Snyder's four-hour Justice League). The issue was his behaviour off-camera and rumours he had gone too far trying to freak out other cast members. 'He did some bad things, Jared Leto did. He gave some really horrific gifts,' said Suicide Squad star Viola Davis. 'He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room, and the henchman came in with a dead pig and plopped it on the table, and then he walked out. And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.' Along with the pigs, Leto was said to have sent used condoms, dead rats and pornographic magazines. Even Will Smith – an actor whom we can now safely say is no stranger to controversy – was weirded out. 'First we found out that Jared wasn't going to be in rehearsals,' said Smith, who played Deadshot. 'And we were like, 'That's messed up! How is he not going to be in rehearsals?' And then there was a bag on the door, and this dude barges in and throws a dead pig on the floor in front of us. We're like, 'OK. Jared has officially set off the Suicide Squad. He went full Joker'.' Going 'full Joker' was nothing new. Throughout his career, he has taken method acting to extremes. In preparation for 2022's superhero film Morbius, Leto met 'doctors and patients who could teach him about living with a rare, incurable blood disease'. To walk with a cane – as Morbius does in the film – he 'studied with real cane users'. 'I remember fearing for this guy's spine,' said co-star Adria Arjona. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple' He'd taken things ever further, appearing opposite Lady Gaga in Ridley Scott's House Of Gucci. 'I did it all,' Leto told i-D magazine. 'I was snorting lines of arrabbiata sauce'. In Blade Runner 2049, in which he played a villainous and blind tech evangelist, he wore special contact lenses that dramatically reduced his vision. 'He was walking with an assistant, very slowly,' director Dennis Villeneuve told the Wall Street Journal. 'It was like seeing Jesus walking into a temple. Everybody became super silent, and there was a kind of sacred moment. Everyone was in awe.' Most drastic of all was Dallas Buyer's Club, for which he shed weight by eating nothing but cucumbers. 'I stayed in character the entire shoot. I couldn't imagine doing it another way. I'd gone too far to pick it up and drop it off,' he informed the Guardian. 'I lost around 40lb [almost three stone/18kg] and then I stopped counting. For me, it was about how it made me feel, how it made other people treat me. I got down to something like 114lb [about eight stone], and that was enough to do what I wanted it to do, which was to change everything about me.' He was widely acclaimed for Dallas Buyers Club. Suicide Squad, however, was a mess, and Leto's scenes were cut significantly. He would later deny the grisliest of the rumours and was reportedly outraged when Warner Bros announced it was pivoting to a Joker origin story starring Joaquin Phoenix, directed by Todd Phillips (for which Phoenix would win an Oscar). 'Leto's frustration that Warner Bros was moving ahead with the Phillips project was so great early on that he tried to throttle the rival Joker in its cradle,' according to a 2019 article in the Hollywood Reporter. 'According to sources familiar with Leto's behaviour, when the Oscar-winning actor learnt of the Phillips project, he not only complained bitterly to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners's parent company.' Uncertain future And then came his Citizen Kane of terrible films, the Venom spin-off Morbius, in which Leto played a moody vampire – a role described by the Telegraph at the time as a 'cross between Russell Brand and a Barbary macaque'. He went on to star opposite Anne Hathaway in We Crashed, Apple TV +'s underwhelming chronicling of the rise and fall of the We Work startup (ironically – or perhaps appropriately – Leto has reportedly made a $90 million fortune from early investments in tech companies such as Airbnb and Uber). He has since gone back on the road with 30 Seconds To Mars , albeit with diminishing returns. London's O2 was half empty when the band played there last year – though an ongoing tour of Europe this summer is sold out. But it was on the big screen that his attentions were focused with Tron: Ares to have been followed by a big screen reboot of Masters of the Universe, with Leto playing sarcastic mega-villain Skeletor. As with so much else in Leto's career, the commercial prospects of these projects is now uncertain. In the case of Tron: Ares it is too late for Disney to flip the ejector switch. The project is essentially done and dusted and Disney has already put out a series of trailers – top heavy with Tron's familiar wiz-bang 'light cycles', along with footage of Leto's co-stars Gillian Anderson, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges (returning from the original). 'Ready?' says Bridges in the latest promo. 'There's no going back'. Disney may regret come to regret that line.
Daily Mail
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Jared Leto accused of sexual misconduct by MULTIPLE women... and several were allegedly minors
Jared Leto is facing allegations from nine women of inappropriate behavior, including with teenage girls. The frontman of 30 Seconds to Mars and star of films including House Of Gucci and Suicide Squad, 53, is alleged to have inflicted the behavior on them over the course of nearly two decades, and the accusations involve women who say they were teenagers at the time of the alleged incidents. According to an exposé published by Air Mail, the claims, which have apparently circulated in Hollywood for years, have now been brought into the open, with one woman stating to the outlet: 'It's been an open secret for a long time.' Reps for Leto haven't yet responded to request for comment, but a representative denied all of the women's claims in a statement to Air Mail. The accusations came to light after Los Angeles–based DJ Allie Teilz, 30, re-shared a 2012 Facebook post on her Instagram Stories, in which she alleged Leto — who was previously called out by other Hollywood stars for being 'full of himself' — assaulted her when she was 17. 'You're not really in LA until Jared Leto tries to force himself on you backstage… in a kilt… And a snow hat,' she claimed. 'I was assaulted and traumatized by this creep when I was 17.' The accusations in a story by Air Mail include allegations of sexual assault, while others claim Leto made unwanted sexual advances at them, even after he allegedly knew they were underage; pictured in September 2024 in Paris She further alleged that Leto 'knew' her age but 'didn't care,' describing his actions as 'predatory, terrifying and unacceptable.' A second woman, whose name was not revealed, told the publication that Leto approached her in 2006 when she was 16 at Urth Caffé in Los Angeles. At the time, he was allegedly visiting the popular cafe with Ashley Olsen, whom he had been rumored to be in a relationship with at the time. 'I looked down and it was Jared Leto. We had a quick conversation, and he got my number,' she claimed. The woman alleged that he called her days later, adding: '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?' The woman alleged their late-night conversations 'turned sexual,' and she claimed that Leto asked questions including, 'Have you ever had a boyfriend?' and 'Have you ever sucked a d***?' Model Laura La Rue, 33, also alleged that she met Leto in 2008, when she was 16 and he was 36, at a Yes! on Prop Two animal rights benefit. 'He asked how old I was,' she alleged. 'I said, "I'm 16. How old are you?"' La Rue claimed to Air Mail that Leto still asked for her number despite knowing her age, and she said he later invited her to his Los Angeles home, where he was 'flirting' and 'teasing [her] the whole time [she] was there.' She even alleged that Leto walked into a room she was in while completely naked at one point, as if 'it was normal.' 'I thought maybe this was just what adult men do,' La Rue added. Leto's representative denied all of the women's accounts in a statement to Air Mail: 'Their communications contain nothing sexual or inappropriate and Ms. La Rue later applied to work as Mr. Leto's personal assistant, further underscoring the absence of anything inappropriate in any of their interactions.' But La Rue denied applying for such a role. Sources quoted in the article described parties at Leto's Los Angeles home and said they had a ratio of 60 'very young women to four or five men,' and they claimed that guests were encouraged to go skinny dipping at the events. Jared's publicist stated that the actor 'has not had a drink or used drugs in over 35 years.' A fourth woman who went nameless claimed she met Leto at an 18-plus club when she was 20. However, it was his assistant who allegedly approached her to ask for her phone number. She said they 'hook[ed] up a little' while still at the club, and she alleged that she subsequently spent time at his home on multiple occasions, but she described Leto as being 'weird.' 'I know some people are kinky, and that's fine,' she said, before adding that 'his kind of kink ... just didn't feel right.' Another unnamed accuser said she began a flirtatious back-and-forth over text messages with Leto when she was still a minor. During her alleged visits to his home, he would ask her sexual questions, including, 'Do any of the little boys you hang out with f*** you?' She said their relationship escalated after she turned 18, and Leto allegedly 'pulled his penis out and started masturbating' during a subsequent visit to his home. She claimed that the Blade Runner 2049 actor put her hand on his penis and told her, 'I want you to spit on it.' In 2016, Leto was reported to have sent his Suicide Squad costars used condoms as a gift that might have been sent by his character in the film, the Joker. But Leto subsequently denied that part of the report in a 2017 SiriusXM interview. 'There were some things that were mentioned about gifts and the fact that I was giving used condoms to people, which was not true. It was not true,' he said. However, the actor did admit to sending them gifts that were 'funny,' 'absurd or outrageous.' In a 2016 interview with E! Online, his costar Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who played Killer Croc, said that Leto had sent him 'sticky Playboy magazines' as part of his character's gift, and he also allegedly sent the entire cast a 'dead pig.' 'That was a good gift because it had the effect of unifying us as a group because then it became us against him,' Akinnuoye-Agbaje said. 'We sent the messenger back with the dead pig and our own personalized message. It got the ball rolling.'
