Portrait of the Artist

At first glance, Chris Collet, clad in a t-shirt, blue jeans, and Topsiders, doesn't look the kind of person who'd play a battered child adopted by a drag queen in the Torch Song Trilogy or a teen who gets decapitated in the horror flick Sleepaway Camp.

At second glance you begin to wonder. The t-shirt depicts different types of sushi, the legs in the blue jeans shake incessantly, and the shoes rest on the floor or his suite in Boston's Ritz-Carlton.

During the past several days the Hunter College High School junior has rested those shoes on floors in Atlanta, Philadelphia and New York on an extended publicity tour for the move Firstborn in which he stars.

"Yeah," he says, picking up a canape, "there are some nice hotels around. They're all pretty nice. Can't complain."

The route to his leading role alongside Terri Garr and Peter Weller in the new Paramount film was less secure. "I did a lot of production in school," he says. "A friend of mine was doing commercials and she said to go for it." After some dozen spots for the Madison Avenue set, he landed a role in The Torch Song Trilogy. "I played a battered child who was gay and adopted by a drag queen." He says, holding back a slight smile.

Drawing "mixed reviews", the show brought Chris out to San Francisco. "Kind of the whole point," he goes on, "was to get to L.A., but it just didn't work out." The Firstborn role came out of a national talent search. "They rally kept me on ice. They let everyone else go and had me read with the rest but they didn't let me know anything for three or four weeks. All they said was don't out your hair."

His hair uncut, Chris began preparing for the role of Jake Livingston. "I had two weeks to get ready. Monday through Friday. I rode the motorcycle and I played Lacrosse on weekends. It's a rough game." But the schedule still afforded him more time than his stage work. "I did eight shows a week and sent to high school kind of not much time for anything else."

And the future? "Nothing define," he says, smiling, "just finishing the eleventh grade." Someone asks, does that mean going to L.A.. "Ohhhhh, noooo, Not L.A. No, please. I don't know what it is I can't deal with. Maybe all of the Palm Trees, "he says, shaking his head. "Oh, I'm sorry is anybody here from L.A.?"

After high, school he says, maybe Shakespeare training. "I like social studies" he says, "but I don't know what you do with that. I met Henry Kissinger the other day at Lincoln Center (for the opening of Firstborn). He ws probably just making his appearance. He's friends with the producer, He's done a lot with social studies."

And where would he study that? "A lot of people from my high school go to Harvard."