Hollywood Dreamer Turned Porn Star Turns Playwright

HOLLYWOOD, CA — Ruggedly handsome with golden-hair and crystal blue eyes, German-born actor Florian Klein landed in Hollywood with dreams of stardom.

He found himself working with the best of the best — Meryl Streep, Barbra Streisand, Jennifer Lopez – serving them hors d’oeuvres.

Many, many catering gigs later, and a couple bit parts as a Nazi soldier (“As a German, of course, you’re called in for a lot of Nazi parts,” explains Klein.”), he landed in porn.

Sure, it’s cliche. But that’s where the cliche ends.

For Klein, the porn industry defied every stereotype that defines it. Now, more than 200 scenes into his career and a bonafide porn star known as Hans Berlin, the actor maintains his tarnished romanticism. He still believes in love. He cherishes the friendship families he found in the adult film industry, and he’s as committed as ever to the ideal that art is what unites us. From this tested romanticism was born the new play "Shooting Star– A Revealing New Musical" now playing at the Hudson Mainstage Theatre in Hollywood and directed by Michael Bello (assistant director for the Tony-nominated “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical”). Written by Klein and based partly on his own life, the play sets out with the lofty goal of proving that despite the loneliness of the digital age, there is more that connects us than divides us.

“I think every actor in Los Angeles has their own movie script in their head,” said Klein.

The idea for “Shooting Star” was born on the set of a porn shoot. Someone was singing in between takes, and Klein, a fan of musicals, began joking around about shooting a musical porn. But then he got to thinking, ‘Why not write a musical set in porn?’

He went home and started writing.

“One of the things I love about this country is if you have a crazy idea, you can always find someone who supports this idea,” Klein said. “In Germany people will say it’s never going to happen... I like the American way of thinking: ‘Even if you fail, at least you tried.’”

So Klein threw himself into the crazy idea of a musical love story set in the realm of adult entertainment. The play largely mirrors Klein’s story. He wanted to write something that de-stigmatizes the industry and captures the humanity of the actors - their triumphs and heartaches. At its heart, the play is a coming-of-age love story, said Klein, a self-confessed Disney fan.

Raised in a small German town, Klein got his first taste of fame in a “wildly unsuccessful boy band” in Europe in the mid 90s. When that fizzled, he moved to New York and enrolled in a four-year drama program. Then he headed to Hollywood to make his mark. But Hollywood marked him for the service industry. Where paid acting gigs where scattershot, catering work was steady.

“The universe got me wrong,” Klein said. “I didn’t want to work for the stars. I wanted to work with the stars.”

After a while, a friend told him he could make decent money as a go-go dancer at Mickey’s, a gay club in West Hollywood. The concept was foreign to the German native. Go-go dancing just doesn’t make sense in a Europe where the smallest bill is a five and a single Euro is a coin, explained Klein.

“I was 38,” he said. “I thought, if someone still wants to see me in my underwear, why not?”

Before long, some other dancers told him he could make even more money in gay porn.

“I said, ‘No. I am an actor. I can’t do that,’” Recalled Klein. “But when I realized I don’t really have an acting career I can destroy, I thought ‘why not?’”

Still Klein was leery, expecting unprofessional productions full of rampant sex and drug use. But that was never the case, he said.

“That sleaziness, that dirty factor — I have never experienced that,” he said. “It was like what I had experienced in Hollywood before. It was really work. Time was money.”

Klein believes his move to porn was the best decision of his life.

Despite the prevalence of sex in advertising and tv and the ubiquity of porn, sex workers are labeled “bad people,” said Klein. It’s assumed they have drug addictions or are too stupid to succeed elsewhere, he added.

But in the adult film industry, Klein discovered a delightful mix of smart and hard-working people, who inspired the characters in his play. There’s the aging star grasping for relevancy, the domineering director, the dreamer intent on finding love in an oversexed world.

As Klein began finding his investors and his audience, he discovered something about his play. It doesn’t just aim to destigmatize a taboo industry, it’s relatable for people far removed from the industry, he said. One older woman told Klein she identified with the character of the aging porn star. Similarly, society just drops women as they age, she explained.

The play also explores the paradox of how lonely it can feel looking for love in an era when a hookup is but an app swipe away. One song called “All the Lovers” asks “where is the love in all the lovers I have known?”

It’s something anyone can relate to, said Klein.

“I think anyone who has ever had a sexual encounter and felt even more lonely than before, they can see themselves in that song,” he said.

The play, which features adult themes and language, runs through June 30th. The Hudson Mainstage Theatre is at 6539 Santa Monica Blvd, and tickets are available at: www.Onstage411.com/Star.

After spending a lifetime dreaming of stardom, Klein now sits at the back of the theater watching actors bring his story to life, and it suits him just fine.

“I always wanted to be an actor. Now I realize it’s so much more fun to actually create this world,” he said. “Seeing the audience react to it — in the times we are living in where you sometimes don’t believe in humanity anymore — you see strangers come into the theater and they laugh, cry and applaud together. There is more that connects us than divides us."