Before he became an Oscar-winning Hollywood star, Jared Leto was just another strikingly handsome actor trying to charm his way through a New York party. But according to former Filipina actress Jenny Syquia, she may have unknowingly walked away from what could have been a Hollywood romance.
In a recent throwback story, Syquia revealed that Leto once asked her out during a party in New York in the early 1990s. Instead of giving him her number, she refused—only to later realize who he actually was.
Looking back, the actress admitted the moment still makes her laugh at herself.
“I never called him (Stupid me). I wonder if he remembers that. (I’m sure he doesn’t). But definitely I do!” she said.
The surprising encounter happened when Syquia was working in the U.S. fashion industry. At the time, she was connected with Vogue and frequently moved within elite fashion circles in New York. It was during one of those nights—at a Calvin Klein party—that she crossed paths with a mysterious stranger who immediately caught her attention.
“At the party, a man walked up to me—honestly one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen,” Syquia recalled. “Almost too good looking to be real. The kind of face where you have to look away because it’s so striking. He had mesmerizing blue eyes.”
They struck up a conversation, casually talking about the people they both knew in the room. Syquia told him she was friends with Carolyn Bessette, who was working at Calvin Klein at the time.
“We started talking. He asked who I knew there. I told him Carolyn and that we had gone to college together and that I worked at Vogue,” she shared.
When she asked the handsome stranger what he did for a living, his answer was simple.
“I’m an actor,” he replied.
Not recognizing him, Syquia kept her guard up. When Leto eventually asked for her phone number so they could go out, she turned him down.
“I told him I didn’t give out my number,” she said.
The rejection didn’t stop him. According to Syquia, Leto walked away—but returned minutes later with a small piece of paper containing his phone number and his name.
“He walked away. Then a few minutes later, he came back and handed me a small piece of paper. On it was written a phone number. And a name. Jared Leto.”
She never dialed it.
Today, that moment feels like a strange sliding-doors story—especially since Leto eventually became one of Hollywood’s most recognizable actors, starring in films like Dallas Buyers Club, Requiem for a Dream, and Suicide Squad, while also leading the rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars.
But the anecdote has another fascinating layer. Syquia said she shared a close connection with Carolyn Bessette, the future wife of John F. Kennedy Jr., long before the latter became one of America’s most talked-about style icons.
“I first met Carolyn Bessette in college at Boston University,” Syquia said. “Carolyn as the gorgeous, well-deserving cover girl and me as Miss May.”
After graduation, both women pursued fashion careers in New York—Bessette at Calvin Klein and Syquia at Vogue—during the height of the supermodel era.
“Carolyn was unforgettable even then,” she said. “People always talk about how beautiful she was—and yes, she truly was—but what cameras could never quite capture was her presence.”
Syquia remembered how Bessette had a magnetic aura that drew people in instantly.
“When Carolyn walked into a room, it was like the sun walked in with her. Yet she never made anyone feel small,” she recalled.
Decades later, Syquia’s story now reads like a Hollywood what-if: a Filipina actress, a future Oscar winner, and a woman who would later marry American royalty all crossing paths in the glamorous chaos of 1990s New York.
And somewhere in that memory is a tiny slip of paper with a phone number—one she never used.
