By Sarika Chawla

Chad Allen goes noir as a sexy private dick in here!'s Third Man Out , the first installment of the Donald Strachey film series, and leaves his teen idol past behind.

On the phone, Chad Allen and I reminisce about the mid-'80s, when the actor was a rakish young blond with the cheekbones of an angel who appeared on such wonderhits as St. Elsewhere and Our House (alongside my imaginary best friend Shannen Doherty). He awws graciously as I admit that I wrote him ardent fan letters and cried into my New Kids' pillowcase when all I received was an autographed picture. It wasn't even a real autograph, but so obviously a copy churned out by his publicists. Damn you, Chad! Damn you!

"Sorry, yeah, I had nothing to do with that." It's okay. "I'd get these letters from boys and girls across the country who were like, 'Wow, if I were only like you, then life would be okay.' And I was like, 'no, you don't understand!' No one wants to hear that a 12-year-old pin-up kid isn't sure if he wants to live." Point taken. Figuring out that you're gay is difficult enough. Figuring out that you're gay while screaming girls rip off your clothes is a mindfuck.

As Allen is promoting his new film, Third Man Out, which premiered Sept. 2 on here! to audience and critical acclaim, he contemplates his niche within Hollywood's gay market: He is one of the few established actors to go public about his sexuality; he is the co-founder of Mythgarden, a production company dedicated to creating gay and lesbian programming; he even taught his straight co-star, Sebastian Spence, how to make out with another guy. "Ha! He was so nervous. At the end of the movie he goes, 'You're the only person that I could ever have done this with, so thank you!'"

It's hard to reconcile the sweet teen queen-turned chiseled, confident man with the self-destructive figure that Allen so openly talks about. From his first commercial at age 4, he has worked steadily in the industry for over 27 years. A veritable dreamboat for '80s tween set, Allen possessed the ideal all-American looks to be fed into the Tiger Beat machine. He was surrounded by a team of publicists, agents, and managers, becoming more of a commodity than an actor who enjoyed what he did. "One of the hardest things to deal with is that I would read those magazines and wonder who they were talking about. Stuff was fabricated or so mixed up, and I was just this confused teenaged kid who wanted the world to know who I was."

Unlike some of his child star peers, he's careful not to implicate his family into his troubled past. "My parents are amazing at how hard they worked to manage my career. They tried to keep it in check, and keep it balanced with my siblings. It was not easy, I know, to be the brother or sister of Chad Allen who is on the covers of every damned teen magazine." Ultimately, he took time off to attend high school, where he reveled in the normalness of being class vice president and performing in school plays. After, he took a gig on a CBS pilot called Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman ... over the next six years, Allen became a household name again, successfully crossing over from child star to respected adult actor.

"It wasn't all a bed of roses," he swears. Allen grew up in Hollywood, where almost anything goes, and he was able to explore his sexuality within the close-knit gay community. But his lifestyle was kept entirely hidden from the public. With the teen magazines still fresh in his memory, he fudged his way through interviews, like a sleazy 1995 Playgirl article that questioned how many women this "good-looking young buck" had slept with ("Over 10, fewer than 1,500.") He was "outed" in 1996, when the Globe ran a photo of Allen kissing another guy in a hot tub. "A guy that I was with sold photos of us together." Ouch. Just 20 years old, Allen faced a major threat to his career. "The general response was 'If you come out, your career will be over. But if you want to, then you can.' Like that's a hell of a choice. But they were presenting options like 'We can get you a girlfriend!'" He chose to keep mum

about the whole situation. "I didn't

come out right away, and I'm glad I didn't then, because I wasn't ready to deal with talking about it publicly. It would have been a disaster."

Early on, one piece of advice that he took to heart was "Don't come out until it's good news." "Had I opened my mouth about it when I was 20, I would have been so easily convinced it was bad. I don't want anybody advocating civil rights that doesn't feel like it's good news about themselves." Six years passed after the Globe outing before he felt the climate was accepting enough for his official coming out, by appearing on the cover of the Advocate in 2002. "I had been getting a lot of letters from young people who had heard the rumors of my sexuality around the Internet. It was kind of like my answer to the hell I went through with teen magazines. For all these years I thought, 'God, I wish I could talk about who I really am so these kids could know,' and here it was, right in front of me, the opportunity to make amends for that." He pauses for a moment of reflection. "It was kind of like shit or get off the pot time. I honestly didn't know when I came out whether it was going to be the end of my career. It's horrifying when it's all you've ever done and it's what you love."

While he dealt with his sexuality, Allen also used up much of his energy battling depression and heavy drug use. "They go hand in hand, I believe. I probably got involved with drugs and addiction as a result of depression issues." From age 12 to 24, he abused a variety of drugs, including crystal meth and alcohol. "I sort of had to confront depression at that point, once everything cleared up enough to start feeling feelings again ... I was in a hospital for a while. I'll spare you the details of what it looked like. The problem with psychiatric care is that the patient ends up feeling a little bit like a pincushion." After coming to terms with his own issues, Allen spoke out about it publicly, heading up separate campaigns on depression and crystal meth addiction that are so prevalent in the gay community today. "It was a struggle, but I learned so much from it ... It's amazing that you can look back and see the horror of walking through all of that stuff, and honestly say that you don't regret any of it."

Although fairy-tale endings are hard to come by, a sober, stable, and more mature Allen is taking his future into his own hands. With Third Man Out, he has embarked on the first of six gritty crime films based on the popular novels of Richard Stevenson. He plays Donald Strachey, a gruff private detective with a boyfriend waiting for him at home. "It's kind of a gay Nick and Nora," he explains, referring to the bantering duo created in Dashiell Hammet's The Thin Man. "That was a major influence, looking at the old noir films and the old Columbo stuff ... Our community isn't quite used to getting entertainment that's fun, so I'm really excited about what it's going to bring for us." When faced with the frequent question of how his coming out affected his career options, he is only filled with optimism. "I'd have to be an idiot to think that it hasn't, but I think it's affected my career in the most amazing ways. I've had a more interesting and exciting career than I ever had before."

"I've been acting forever. I still love it and I'm still going to keep doing it," he stresses, but points out that he is now focusing his energies behind the scenes as well. Two years ago, he co-founded his production company Mythgarden, with Robert Gant and Christopher Racster. "We're working to bring the next generation of gay and lesbian storytelling to the screen, and we're really excited about that." Their upcoming project, Save Me, takes place in an "ex-gay" ministry that's run by Judith Light, in which Allen and Gant begin a relationship. Also coming up is a project called The Way Out, which they are co-producing with David Duchovny. "It's the story of two gay men who fall in love in a senior citizens home, and it looks at the issues of elder gay housing. It's a fantastic love story."

Allen also stars in the upcoming film End of the Spears, based on the true story of a group of Christian missionaries that make contact with the Waodani, a notoriously violent Ecuadorian tribe. Having grown up in a Roman Catholic family, Allen saw this project as a challenge he wanted to undertake. "There were a lot of people on both sides that weren't particularly interested in me doing this movie. I am from a Christian background, but I have a personal spirituality that spans the distance from Buddhism to Hindu philosophy to Native American beliefs. That aside, this movie is about the power of love. I knew it was an opportunity to bridge these two disparate communities that are believed to be enemies- the gay and the Christian communities." He recalls meeting Steve Saint, the real life missionary that he plays in the film: "He was nervous and didn't quite know what to do about all this. After we spent some time together, it seemed to be in the interest of the God that both he and I believed in to make this film together." After shooting, Allen was invited to live with the intensely private Waodani tribe for two weeks, where he learned everything from fishing for 50-pound catfish to shooting monkeys with poisoned darts -- "My apologies to the animal rights activists out there!" he interjects quickly.

So I may be (almost) beyond my childhood crush, but Allen is so open about his vulnerabilities that he's developed a whole new level of the cuteness factor. Even while he firmly takes a stand on behalf of his community, he shies away from the activist label. "A really good role model, if you want to call it that, doesn't need to be perfect. More people seem to connect with what I have to say and what I have to offer when I'm willing to be real. That means warts and all." He's made his living from a lifetime of television roles, but he is looking at a new chapter in his life. Besides all the professional growth, he's harboring visions of having children, perhaps raising them in Costa Rica (assuming his actor boyfriend hits it big and brings in the dough), and continuing to elevate the gay and lesbian community through his work with Mythgarden. "I hope we all get to teach each other whatever experiences, hold each others' hands. Do whatever we can do to ease fear, because there's too much fear in the world."

Third Man Out airs on demand on here!, available via satellite and major cable providers. For more information, see www.heretv.com.