With his blond and clean-cut good looks, this iconic actor became the Hollywood heartthrob of the 1950s and 1960s. He drove young female fans into fits of ecstasy – but was hiding a dark secret that almost destroyed him…

”At first, they had Paris, the lover of Helen of Troy in mind. But I guess they thought they couldn’t name me Paris Donahue because there was already a Paris, France and Paris, Illinois,” he said.

Eventually, the actor made his film debut in Man Afraid. Only two years later, he signed on with Warner Bros – the company which saw his true potential.

”They’d asked me to light a cigarette, and when I did, they screamed and fell down,” Troy recalled.

In 1959, he starred in A Summer Place, the film that skyrocketed him into stardom and made him a hot commodity.

Often playing a good guy cast beside an attractive blonde female, Donohue experienced a fast transformation into a teen heartthrob. Despite this fame, he did not do well financially.

”I was living like a movie star but wasn’t being paid like one,” he revealed and added: “I lived way over my head and got into great trouble.”

Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee were a great romantic movie couple in the late ’50s. Throughout his career, Troy was married four times.

His first marriage was with Suzanne Pleshette, followed by Valerie Allen, Alma Sharpe, and Vicky Taylor, all of which ended with a divorce.

As his love life continued to decline, he began to suffer and turned to several substances. His unhealthy habits didn’t help his acting career either.

By the end of the 1960s, his life was in shambles.

”I was loaded all the time. I’d wake up about 6:30 in the morning, take three aspirins mixed with codeine, slug down half a pint of vodka, and then do four lines of cocaine,” he shared.

But Donahue always maintained that his addiction never tainted any sets he worked on, claiming he was never drunk or otherwise impaired while working. His career was, according to the actor, not the reason he began drinking in the first place.

He first drank in the seventh grade while studying for an exam. This developed into a habit that grew with time and that nearly destroyed his future.