Jared Leto has starred on a good TV show (My So-Called Life), he’s been in many good movies (Requiem for a Dream, Blade Runner 2049, The Thin Red Line, etc.), he’s won an Academy Award, he’s the lead singer of a popular rock band, and he inspired a very good joke from Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping about his popular rock band.
But to me, he’ll always be the guy who (reportedly) gave Margot Robbie a rat.
Back in 2015, actor Adam Beach, who played Slipnot alongside Leto and Robbie in Suicide Squad, claimed that the Joker actor “sent [Margot Robbie] a nice love letter with a black box with a rat in it — a live rat. It was beautiful. Then he sent bullets to Will [Smith] with a letter.” He also gave his co-stars a “dead hog,” as well as “condoms and anal beads” to Robbie, Smith, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. Leto might be TWISTED, but he denies the rat rumors. Kind of. The rat might be real, but it definitely wasn’t dead.
That comes from a GQ video where Leto breaks down his “most iconic roles,” including playing the Joker in the DC anti-hero movie. “We had a lot of fun with it, but it’s also interesting how this stuff all takes on a life of its own,” he said. Then: “But I never gave Margot Robbie a dead rat. That’s just, that’s not true.” (Ah yes, the ol’ “Monster Island is actually a peninsula” defense.) Leto didn’t give Robbie a rat, allegedly, but he did find “this place in Toronto that had great vegan cinnamon buns, and that was a very common thing.”
In defense of Leto: I, too, have not given Margot Robbie a dead rat.