A Former Child Star's Grown-Up Reward

What happened to all the money?

"Name me one child actor," Haley says, "who after he became an adult had this lifelong supply of cash." Haley explains that the child actors of the 1970s didn't make the same kind of pay as Dakota Fanning does today. But still. All of it, gone?

"As much as I love and miss my dad, he had problems of his own, and one of them was gambling."

Cards or ponies?

"He was a professional blackjack player. He became obsessed with it. He learned to count cards. He became quite good at it. He wrote a book on the subject. It was even published. He won $75,000 once at a tournament in Vegas. But gambling is gambling."

Bud died eight years ago, long after his son had given up acting, and was producing infomercials. "I recall one time, I was a little kid, and we're driving along, on our way home from an audition, and I have this memory, just burned into me," Haley says. "My dad looked over at me and said, 'When you grow up, you're going to hate me.' "

Haley says, sure, he wishes his father hadn't gambled away the money. "But it's also irrelevant. I love my dad. By the time I turned 18 and got the money I'd have blown it all anyway. I would have done all the stupid things a kid does with money, whether it was $50,000 or $500,000. I was going to whip through it, in a big alcoholic burst. No doubt in my mind, I would have ripped through it."

As a child actor, Haley says, "I was so programmed to expect that opportunity would seek me." It did not. After his body and his voice changed, after he stopped growing and began to look no longer cute and scrappy but ferrety and scary, what he calls "a character-actor-looking guy," he waited for the phone to ring. "I waited for 10 years." The roles became fewer, badder. "All of a sudden, they ask if you want to play this B role in this B movie and suddenly the quality of the role wasn't as important as paying my bills. And then a B movie leads to a C movie to D to F to theatrical oblivion."

To make ends meet, he drove a limo and worked as a security guard and did construction. It was embarrassing for him. Not the work, but when people would ask, hey, aren't you the guy who? And living with his mom. At 30.

Finally, Haley had his epiphany: It was over. "So I took the path of least resistance" and went corporate -- step by step, doing sound, editing, lighting, producing, making promotional and instructional videos. He got into direct-response commercials, better known as infomercials. Eight years ago he moved to San Antonio, coaxed there by a work friend, where he started his own company making TV commercials. "For the last five years, I've been making a good living at it. For the first time in my life, I'm not behind on my bills." He got married again, for the third time, happily. He and his wife were honeymooning in France when director Steve Zaillian tracked him down for a part, a meaty supporting role as the bodyguard Sugar Boy in "All the King's Men," alongside Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Sean Penn.

"I don't know if you can imagine what I was feeling. This came out of nowhere. I send in an audition tape and the next day I get the phone call. There was this great hope and this great fear. I thought I just might get a second chance. And fear that I might get right to the edge and it won't happen again." It did. "Little Children" followed.

So it all worked out?

"I don't know the answer to that. I really don't," Haley says. "This is a tough one because it's a confusing answer. If I had to live this all over again, I would choose to live it the same way. And I don't know why. But I would. I fell in love with the craft. But it was a big emotional price. It's really almost impossible to make it in this business once. And it's like super-duper impossible to make it in this business twice."

He has two children; Christopher is in his 20s; Olivia is 8 years old. He wouldn't let the younger one act professionally, he says. No way.

"I know that's hypocritical, but that's the way I feel. I wouldn't want [her] to do it. I just really, really wouldn't."