Jared Leto has lost his Best Supporting Actor Oscar statuette

Jared Leto, winner of Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, poses in the press room during the Oscars at Loews Hollywood Hotel on March 2, 2014 in Hollywood, California. Photo: TNS

Jared Leto has no idea where his Oscar statuette is. It seems he moved houses in Los Angeles a while back, but the little gold guy didn't make the move with him.

"It's been missing for, like, three years, and I didn't know that," the actor and musician said recently on The Late Late Show With James Corden. "I don't think anyone wanted to tell me."

The individually engraved trophy, which he won in 2014 for supporting actor in Dallas Buyers Club, "somehow just magically kind of disappeared," the laid-back Leto explained.

"Everyone searched for it high and low, and, you know; I hope it's in good hands wherever it is, but, you know, we haven't seen it in quite some time."

There is no stable secondary market for Academy Awards, so the current owner had better be happy with their find: A winner who wants to cash in on the award must first offer to sell it back to the motion picture academy for US$10, an offer that would be accepted immediately. The organisation aggressively pursues would-be Oscar vendors through the courts and has received several favourable rulings supporting its efforts.

Leto, predictably, has a live-and-let-live attitude toward the situation and presumes the Oscar is intact: "It's not the sort of thing someone accidentally throws in the trash," he told Corden.

He said that when he won the statuette, it was passed around to so many people that he didn't see it half the night.

"The thing's beat up and scratched up. But people had fun taking pictures with it," Leto said. "It's nice to share it, so hopefully someone's taking good care of it."

Frances McDormand got luckier than Leto in 2018 after her Oscar disappeared the night she won it: The guy who lifted the best actress award posted about his prize on Facebook. He was arrested at the Oscars' home base, the Hollywood & Highland complex, before midnight.

But Leto has another chance at awards gold with his new movie, the grim psychological thriller The Little Things. The 49-year-old plays suspect Albert Sparma in the movie, which is set in 1990s LA and stars fellow Oscar winners Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as cops. – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service