Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret

I really wanted to live in LA.

I wanted to find an agency to start modelling.

This is the building where the Ford agency is.

I think it was the eighth floor.

It's almost like I can see myself, like, outside of my body.

I've noticed I do that, though.

Like, if there's, like, some sort of trauma involved,

I really do, like, just detach.

Jared Leto.

He was standing...

...to the left of those double doors.

My mom noticed him as we were going up the stairs.

I kind of saw him look over.

He hung up the phone and just, like, walked right in behind us.

He brought up that he had won a major award.

Does anybody want to try it out for size?

You can, if anybody wants to fondle.

Yeah, here.

He was like, "Oh, yeah, you're gonna get signed.

"Definitely. You're so beautiful."

And he asked for my e-mail

so he can invite me and my mom to his, like, Oscar party.

I bet this is a first - the first person to ever...

...give their Oscar away for...

...an orgy in the press room.

I was 16 at the time

and he was 42.

He did e-mail me and then, very quickly,

it turns into this whole, like, sexual thing on the phone,

saying all these, like, things that you shouldn't say to a child.

Thank you very much and congratulations.

I was... I was 17.

17.

As a 14-year-old girl with a little... with a little crush on him.

I was very excited to see Jared Leto.

I think that was the first time I ever met a celebrity.

"Oh, my God. Do you know who that is?! That's Jared Leto!"

He had invited me to his house.

Asked me to come meet him in his hotel.

"Jared Leto cordially invites you to a celebration."

Sending an invite out to a lot of models.

I ran to the autograph table.

You know, most young girls saw him very much as a heart-throb.

Wait, but...

...this is problematic.

There's a whole population who don't know who he truly is.

You really just chose to take your power and abuse it.

Alarms started going off in my head.

"This is not what I came here for."

"By the time I get back, I would like your clothes to be off."

"It doesn't matter what your age is. It doesn't matter if you're underage."

And that's when I realised he was in his early 30s.

He was 34.

He was 42 at the time.

And then he just goes,

"If you're gonna sleep here,

"you're gonna wake up with a dick in your ass."

People are like, "What did you hope to accomplish with your book?"

Two things. I want to be proud of it and I want to not get sued.

- Yeah. - Touch and go there for a little while.

Okay.

Mm-hm.

So, Jared Leto is an actor

at the very highest realms of the industry.

He won an Oscar for his role

in "Dallas Buyers Club,"

in which he played a trans woman.

And the Oscar goes to...

...Jared Leto, "Dallas Buyers Club."

That sealed his status

as a household name

and one of the power players in Hollywood.

He started out as a very well-known TV actor

in "My So-Called Life."

His role, Jordan Catalano, was...

...the school dreamboat.

A generation of women, and, I think, some men,

were mesmerised by those blue eyes.

He's unique, in that he's not only

a high-profile actor,

he's also an entrepreneur.

And he's an investor.

Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Reddit...

I've always been entrepreneurial

ever since I sold dope as a kid.

Whoo!

He's associated with fashion houses,

and, also, he's a really

successful rock star,

with his band Thirty Seconds To Mars.

I think the first time I ever came across Jared Leto

was watching "Requiem For A Dream"

when I was a teenager.

I always thought you were the most beautiful girl I ever seen.

Really?

I thought he was incredible.

It was a film that definitely stayed with me.

Air Mail's a digital weekly based in New York.

It does a bit of everything.

True crime, arts and culture.

I've also done investigative work.

I follow this DJ called Allie Teilz, on Instagram.

In April 2025,

she posted, on her Instagram,

a screenshot of a Facebook status

she'd posted originally in 2012.

She went on to say that she was underage,

she was 17 at the time,

and that he was aware of her age.

She has a big following.

She has over 100,000 followers.

She started getting a lot of responses

from women who'd had allegedly similar experiences with Jared,

which she was then posting.

I was refreshing her story every few hours,

and I was quite stunned by the wealth of responses that she got.

The experiences ranged from inappropriate behaviour to assault.

It captured my attention and I started looking into the story.

My name is Jessica Sartenaer.

I'm a documentary producer and journalist.

I've been making documentaries for nearly ten years...

...often looking into high-profile people.

We saw Allie's post and the reaction.

This is NOT something you see every day.

If all of this was true,

these were allegations on a massive scale,

about a very big player in Hollywood.

So, we immediately started investigating.

I spoke to some of the women who wrote in to Allie.

I managed to track them down.

I was putting down the phone and

I felt a little bit sick to my stomach.

Among the allegations, there was one woman,

she was 18 at the time.

She went over to his house and he got naked

and grabbed her hand and put it on his penis and said,

"I want you to spit on it."

I gathered all my research,

put together the story.

Ultimately, nine women contributed.

A lot of them were very scared,

which is why most of them requested anonymity.

We did send a right to reply to Leto and his team,

and they responded,

expressly denying every allegation.

The article went live.

It was pretty much picked up worldwide.

The Guardian,

Italian national newspaper Il Corriere della Sera.

Actor and musician Jared Leto

has been accused of sexual misconduct and predatory behaviour.

Allegedly... Allegedly likes very young girls, teenage girls.

I saw it was reported that Disney was holding crisis talks.

Um, he was meant to be playing the lead in "Tron: Ares."

I would like you to meet Ares,

the ultimate soldier.

I think the crisis talks were surrounding the marketing campaign.

It was a big deal.

And I really thought, you know, "This is gonna...

"This is gonna have some real-life repercussions for...

"...for Jared."

When the Air Mail article came out,

this was the first time that women had gone on the record,

alleging that they had been sexually abused by Leto.

We watched and waited to see what the consequences might be.

So, as the days went on...

...I was typing in "Jared Leto allegations"

or just googling "Jared Leto".

I started seeing other news about him that was unrelated...

And I saw the articles surrounding the allegations

start to trickle off.

I thought, "Oh, wow." Like, "That's it."

I was... I guess I was disappointed.

I was disappointed the world didn't take my victims' allegations seriously.

Within weeks, Leto started doing publicity for "Tron: Ares"...

We're in London and we're super excited.

It's been a great night so far.

...culminating in an appearance on top of the Piccadilly Lights

as a promotional stunt for the film.

A really uncomfortable truth about Hollywood is that

there's now calculations being made

that this is not a career-ender.

I think that calculation got made with Jared Leto.

"We can quash it, we can ride it out, we can deflect it

"and, six months from now, or, you know, six minutes from now,

"another story will come down the pike and

"suck up all the oxygen in the room."

We were still working on our investigation in the background.

40 women had written into Allie.

Nine women had gone on the record with Air Mail.

So we were really asking ourselves,

how widespread was this...

...and how long has it been going on for?

We started digging deeper...

...and that's when we found Etta.

The first e-mail,

he just sent an image of the invitation.

"Jared Leto cordially invites you to a celebration."

I said, "I thank you for the invite, but I couldn't make it,

"even though I'm sure it would have been fun."