Ten women have told the BBC that Jared Leto sexually abused or harassed them when they were teenagers, with four making accusations that could constitute criminal conduct under California law. The Oscar winner, who is 54 and has a European tour scheduled for next year, says none of it happened. Nine of the ten women say they are sharing their stories publicly for the first time.
What the Women Are Actually Saying
The BBC documentary, Jared Leto: Hollywood's Dark Secret, gives detailed accounts from four women the network identifies as Isabel, Alex, Clara, and Etta. According to CBS News, which is a partner network of the BBC, Isabel says she was 17 when Leto took her to a motel, kissed her, and used her hand to masturbate himself. She says she told him she wanted to leave, and he checked the hallway before letting her out of what she called a "dingy gross motel" room.
Clara says she had sex with Leto at his California home when she was 17 and he was 34. Under California law, that can be classified as statutory rape. She told the BBC he instructed her to call him "daddy" and to pretend to be "a little girl" or "my little girl." Her exact words deserve to sit there for a moment without editorial commentary: "There is no well-adjusted man in his 30s who's going to look at a teenager and think she would be a great partner."
Etta told the BBC she received explicit sexual emails from Leto when she was 16. Two years later, she says he sent her a non-disclosure agreement. She never signed it. The BBC says it viewed the NDA. A third accuser, Etta, says Leto directly mentioned the two of them having sex. The fourth woman in the criminal conduct category, identified only as Alex, says she was 19 when Leto threatened her with sexual assault while she was alone with him in a hotel room.
This Is Not a New Story. That's the Problem.
The BBC says it identified more than 120 separate allegations about Leto's behavior toward women, many of them online. This documentary did not materialize from nowhere. In June 2025, the outlet Air Mail published accusations from nine women detailing sexual impropriety. That same report noted that LA DJ Allie Teilz had resurfaced a 2012 Facebook post she wrote about Leto trying to force himself on her backstage. In an Instagram story, Teilz said she was 17 at the time, that Leto knew her age, and described what happened as "predatory, terrifying and unacceptable."
Leto's team called Teilz's allegations "demonstrably false." They have called most of this demonstrably false, for years, with no apparent consequences to his career or his touring schedule.
All ten women in the BBC documentary say their encounters with Leto happened between 2002 and 2016, when he was in his 30s and 40s. As one of his accusers put it: "This was 25 years ago. He has gotten away with it."
His Own Bandmates' Employees Were Uncomfortable
It's not just the accusers. Two men who worked with Thirty Seconds to Mars told the BBC they were uncomfortable watching Leto interact with teenage girls at the time, saying he occasionally invited them to his dressing room or to the house where the band was recording. "I think everyone thought the age gap was way too big," one former band employee said.
That is a remarkable thing for a former employee to say on record to a documentary crew. That is not a detail that slips into a news story quietly. Multiple people in his professional orbit apparently noticed a pattern, felt uneasy about it, and said nothing publicly for two decades.
The BBC says it corroborated several of the women's accounts with family members and friends who were aware of the interactions at the time the encounters took place. The network also says it reviewed photos and messages that support the women's claims.
What Leto Says, and What Follows From That
Leto's representatives provided a statement: "I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life. These claims are absolutely and categorically false." That is the full statement. No context, no nuance, no acknowledgment that ten women have now spoken about him publicly on camera.
No criminal charges have ever been filed against him. CBS News is clear that it has not independently corroborated the accusations. Those are important caveats, and they belong in this article.
What also belongs in this article: Leto won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2014. He is currently scheduled to tour Europe and the UK with Thirty Seconds to Mars next year. Venues have not, as of publication, announced any changes to those plans.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe that ten women, nine of whom are sharing their stories publicly for the first time, all independently fabricated detailed, corroborated, emotionally specific accounts of sexual encounters with the same man over a 14-year period. You are supposed to believe they did this for reasons unclear, about a guy whose team has been calling allegations "demonstrably false" and "categorically untrue" for at least a year of sustained public scrutiny. That is what a denial of this kind asks you to accept.
The NDA is the part that deserves more attention than it will probably get. Etta says Leto sent her an NDA two years after sending her explicit sexual emails, emails he sent knowing she was 16 years old. The BBC viewed it. NDAs are not things people send to women they have had no contact with. They are documents people send when they are worried about what someone might say. If these claims are categorically false, what exactly was that agreement meant to keep quiet?
Leto has a European tour booked. He has an Oscar on a shelf somewhere. He has a statement that uses the word "categorically." What he does not appear to have is any serious institutional pressure to answer for any of this in a forum more consequential than a BBC documentary that most of his fans will never watch. That is not an accident. That is how this has worked for a very long time, for a very specific category of powerful man. The women in this film already knew that. They said so themselves.
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