Colton Haynes:Losing a Teenage Dream

By age 15, I got my first modeling agent. I had submitted photos to the top agencies in New York hoping they’d be my ticket out of my provincial hometown. When I got a message on Myspace in 2005 asking if my then-boyfriend, Jay, and I would pose for a gay magazine called XY, I didn’t think twice. As soon as I got there, I knew exactly what to do. I took my shirt off. I changed into a pair of shredded jeans. I began lifting dumbbells. I put a beanie on and stuck my tongue out. I looked up at the camera, trying to fuck it the way I’d seen boys do in other shoots. I crawled on my knees, changed into a pair of pants with a hole in the crotch, and lay on the bed shirtless with my legs spread so you could see my white underwear through the rip in the groin. Everything but the camera fell away. It felt just like dancing at the club. Jay and I were invited out to Los Angeles to celebrate the release of the issue. During our trip, we wound up at the home of a movie executive who lived in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. There were lots of other young men there, milling around the cavernous living room. They all looked like me: wide-eyed and full of promise. At dinner, I was seated next to a writer. He was 50ish and had a familiar hunger in his eyes. “So you’re moving out here, right?” he said. “Yes!” I replied. “With Jay, my boyfriend — he’s right over there.” “Ah, young love,” he said. “That’ll end. When it does, give me a call. I can help you if you need anything.” After I returned home, I received a package from the writer. He had gotten my address from a mutual friend. It contained some calling cards — I had lied and told him I was out of minutes for my cell phone when he’d asked for my number — and an expensive calculator because I’d mentioned I wasn’t doing well in math class. I found his gifts to be encouraging. If all I have to do is bat my eyes and flirt with people to get opportunities in Hollywood, I thought, that’s already what I do all the time. It was the most obvious thing in the world to me.

submissions to every acting agent or manager I could find online, I was starting to question why I had come. Finally, in 2007, a management company took the bait. “We love your look,” a rep said over email. Later that week, I visited the office for a meeting. There were two teenage boys roughhousing in the lobby. Through a window, I could see a tiny pool in which guys in swim trunks were splashing and laughing. It was disconcerting. I imagined all of them leaving their hometowns to come here and find they would be competing with so many others who looked just like them.

Eventually, I was called upstairs to the office, where one of the owners of the company — let’s call him Brad — was waiting for me with his assistant. He was wearing a skintight muscle tee and had gleaming-white veneers. He was middle-aged, and his hairline looked as if it had recently been rejuvenated.

“How did you find out about us?” he asked.

“I found you online,” I said. “You know the actors on the WB? I want a career like that.”

“Why are you using your hands so much when you talk? And your posture is too … loose,” he said. “We’re definitely going to have to change your mannerisms. They’re a little too … theater.” Code for gay. I stood up straighter. “Can you sing?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. I began singing “Home,” from the Broadway musical Beauty and the Beast. After a few beats, he stopped me.

“Do you have a new headshot?” he asked.

I handed him one of my comp cards from the modeling agency, which was all I had. He studied it. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be there. “I’ve seen enough,” he said. “You should come to acting class tonight. I’d like to represent you.” That was it. After months of waiting, it felt too easy. And confusing. Did he like my performance or just my looks? And was he also my acting coach?

In class, there were about 20 other young actors. Brad set us up in twos: some pairs of men, some of women, others mixed. I was paired with a good-looking guy I’ll call Ethan, whom I recognized from a popular television show.

“Today you’ll be working through the scenes we’ll be putting on in Thursday’s class,” Brad said. “First, we’ll have you cold read on-camera.”

Ethan rolled his eyes. “Sexy-scene night,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“Thursdays are sexy-scene night,” he said with a grimace. When it came time for me to read the scene, my hands were shaking. It was from The War Boys, a low-budget film about two young men who fall in love while living in a border town. I became so aware of my mannerisms I could hardly get a word out of my mouth.

“Stop moving your face so much!” Brad yelled from a seat in the front row. “Not so musical theater!” He stopped me. “You need more practice,” he said. “You and Ethan take some time over the next couple days to get ready for Thursday’s class.” Ethan looked at me disdainfully. I mouthed “Sorry” to him.

The next day, I met Ethan at his apartment, where he was rooming with a few other young actors, all of whom seemed straight and uninterested in befriending me.

“We’re going to have to get really comfortable with each other if we’re going to do this during sexy-scene night,” Ethan said as we began reading together.

“What’s sexy-scene night?” I finally asked.

“We all do sex scenes where we have to get fully naked,” he said. “It teaches us how to be comfortable showing our bodies onscreen.”

“We’re doing this scene naked?”

“Yes.”

“We’re doing a sex scene?”

“We don’t actually have sex,” he said. “But according to this stage direction” — he flicked through the pages — “I’ll be mounting you and thrusting in and out of you. And we have to make out. So why don’t we get it out of the way and make out now? So we’re both comfortable.” I must have looked confused. “I’m straight,” he added. “Just so you know.” Ethan grabbed me by the back of my head and kissed me for longer than I was expecting. Our lips pressed together. He gazed into my eyes with such tenderness it confused me. Were we about to actually have sex? Or was this acting? Then his eyes went cold. “Okay,” he said, “let’s run the scene.”

Up first that Thursday night were an actress and actor re-creating Halle Berry’s sex scene from Monster’s Ball. “Make me feel good,” the young woman said, tears streaming down her face. She took off her lacy tank top and revealed her breasts. “I just want you to make me feel good.” She hiked up her skirt and pulled her underwear down to her ankles over her stripper heels.

The young actor playing the Billy Bob Thornton part was already on a hit TV show. I watched, paralyzed, as he unbuttoned his pants, stripped naked, and crawled behind her on his knees. Mascara tears ran down her face. She stared at us, at Brad. As her scene partner took her from behind, she let out a bloodcurdling scream, as if he had really just jammed himself inside her. “Make me feel good!” she screamed. “Make me feel good!” It was disturbing: a young woman pretending to be penetrated in front of a class of actors for the sake of impressing her manager. I was terrified knowing Ethan and I would be performing next.

We began with our lines. Eventually, I had to take off my pants. I stared into Ethan’s eyes, feeling everyone else’s eyes on my body. I pulled down my boxers, and I got on my knees. I turned Ethan, bare naked, toward the audience and began performing a fake oral-sex scene on him. Then he threw me down on all fours and simulated penetration while my dick flapped back and forth, slapping against my stomach. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at the audience.

After it was over, we put our clothes back on and stood onstage while Brad critiqued us. “Your balls hang so low,” he marveled to Ethan.

“Thank you,” Ethan said.

Then Brad’s gaze turned to me. “Colton, we have got to cut that hair,” he said. “And please stop moving your forehead so much. It looks like I could grow crops in those lines. We’ve been over this already.” Of all the things that had happened to me in my life, I had never felt more demoralized.

Later that week, Brad arranged for me to meet a hairstylist at his house. He presented this opportunity like it was a favor, so I pretended to be grateful as the man sheared my hair military short. Brad had just finished working out with his trainer, and there were still beads of sweat on his Botoxed forehead. He was eating a bowl of cereal; milk dribbled down his chin as he appraised my new hair. “There’s the boy everyone will want to see,” he said. “There’s the star.” I felt naked again. I couldn’t hide behind my mop of tween-star hair anymore.

In our next on-camera class, Brad praised me. “Everyone needs to look at Colton,” he said. “This kid is going places.” I knew what he was doing: withholding validation, then meting it out one morsel at a time so you craved the attention even as you hated him for being stingy with it. It was the kind of behavior that bonded him to the damaged young people who passed through his class. I was happy he had said my performance was strong — as though I had passed the test. People with a stronger sense of self-worth might have quit after being so humiliated, but I belonged here. I guess I was an actor after all.

Too late OP

Dan he used to be so hot. Now he looks like a 45 year old hairdresser who wears foundation and eyeliner. Sad.

He definitely hit the wall hard, and quick.

This story is well-written and heartbreaking.

It seems to capture the dilemma all gay actors face, but few acknowledge.

You can say Colton has nothing to lose at this point. But he seems to show, from a young age, a level of self-awareness that many adults never achieve.

I hope he finds happiness in the years ahead.

R11 - “I hope he finds happiness in the years ahead.”

Not very likely. He peaked years ago, and will lose himself trying to regain what he once had. Will be a sad downward spiral.

[Quote] My mental health deteriorated, and I grew dependent on alcohol and pills. When a doctor suggested my secret was making me sick, I knew he was right. I came out of the closet in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2016. I hoped it would set me free, and in some ways it did. An outpouring of support followed. But people also published think pieces saying it had taken me too long; another gay actor implied the way I’d done it was cowardly. And incidentally, the work mostly dried up. When I was closeted, I beat out straight guys to play straight roles, and I played them well. Now, the only auditions I get are for gay characters, which remain sparse. Is that because I’m not very good? Maybe. But that didn’t stop me from booking roles before. It’s no different for the young gay actors I see coming up today, trying to make it in a system that isn’t built for them.