Not many people can lay claim to the kinds of achievements Geelong local Chloé Hayden has realised in her 25 years.
Award-winning actor, author, advocate, motivational speaker and influencer, Chloé, who was diagnosed at 13 with autism and ADHD, has also just received the 2022 Victorian Disability Emerging Leader award.
“It was such an honour to receive it, it was incredible,” Chloé said.
“When I found out I was a finalist for the award I saw the list of other finalists and all their achievements. To even be in the same category as those people was pretty surreal.
“And then watching the awards, I didn’t really even think about winning, it was just really nice to be a finalist. Then when they said my name I was just blown away, it was really cool.”
Her creative pursuits aside, Chloé won the award for her advocacy work campaigning, among other things, against shock therapy in the United States – advocacy that got worldwide coverage and caught the attention of celebrities such as Jimmy Kimmel and Jack Black.
Chloé said that her experiences as a young person diagnosed with autism led naturally to standing up for others.
“When I got diagnosed I did what any 13-year-old does, I Googled it,” she said.
“And the only things I found were these awful, terrifying articles written by doctors blaming parents for having autistic kids. ‘Here’s how it’s caused, you were probably drinking through your pregnancy’, stuff like that.
“And then post on forums written by parents asking how to make their kids not autistic, or saying their lives were ruined because of it.”
To see her condition referred to only in negative, and often pejorative, terms made Chloé feel worse, not better, about herself.
“When you’re 13 and have gone through your entire life feeling like you don’t belong anywhere, and then you find a word for your brain that’s only associated with awful, scary, terrifying things, it made me think, what’s my point in being here?” she said.
“So I started a blog that was just me screaming out to the universe. I wasn’t doing it to be inspirational, I was just begging to find other people like me.
“And I did, and found all those other people had been through the same things and we didn’t have anyone speaking positively about us.
“By the time I was 16 I realised that if no one else was going to do it, maybe it was my job. And now I’ve got a book and I’m in a Netflix series and it’s all just taken off more than I ever imagined.”
Chloé is co-starring in this year’s reboot of Heartbreak High, the seminal ‘90s youth drama set in a multicultural Sydney high school, where she plays Quinni, who is also autistic.
“I’m very excited, the process was amazing and the whole cast was so lovely,” Chloé said.
“I was cast before the show had finished being written, which was a really lovely, quite rare and unique experience, because I got to help flesh out my character and dig into her story and who she was.
“It was an awesome thing, to work with the creators and the writing team to say, this is who she is and this is who she needs to be, and have them go ‘awesome’ and have that as part of her story.”
The experience of not only seeing herself represented in contemporary media, but also being able to help shape that representation, was something Chloé will never forget.
“There was one time when the creator of the show, Hannah Chapman, sent me a bit of a script and asked me to read it and tell her what I thought of it,” she said.
“It literally felt like it was pulled from my diary. Like, word for word. I thought, that exact situation has happened to me.
“I just sat there bawling, because I was like, this is my life. It’s in media now. I grew up never seeing myself represented, so knowing that young, disabled, autistic, neurodivergent people can see themselves represented in a show by an awesome, cool character and think, she’s okay with who she is, so I can be too.”
Chloé was also writing her first book, Different, Not Less, as she filmed the upcoming series, which was released this week.
Chloé said the book is a culmination on paper of all the work she’s done in her life so far.
“I was a blogger for a long time before this book, and I guess my entire life has been about advocating and trying to create a more inclusive world for disabled people and everyone,” she said.
“This book is pretty much that. It’s the past eight years of advocacy, of fighting and educating, all in one book. It’s there in the subtitle, ‘A neurodivergent’s guide to embracing your true self and finding your happily ever after’.”
Chloé said she could never have imagined, back in the dark days of bullying and isolation before her diagnosis, that she would be living such an amazing and impactful life.
“Even now I’m convinced that it’s all a dream,” she said.
“I’m so convinced I’m going to wake up and be like, whoa, that was crazy. None of this feels real.
“If you were to write a movie about this, I’d be like, okay, that’s a bit dramatic. It’s crazy.”
