Billy Hayes

William "Billy" Hayes (born April 3, 1947) is an American writer, actor, and director whose memoir Midnight Express chronicles his 1970 arrest at Istanbul's airport for attempting to smuggle two kilograms of hashish out of Turkey, his ensuing five-year imprisonment under harsh conditions, and his 1975 escape by rowing a makeshift boat seventeen miles across the Sea of Marmara to Greece. Co-authored with William Hoffer and published in 1977, the book achieved international bestseller status in eighteen languages, detailing Hayes' experiences in Turkish prisons including initial sentencing to four years that escalated to life imprisonment following a retrial. Its 1978 film adaptation, directed by Alan Parker and featuring a script by Oliver Stone that won an Academy Award, amplified the story's reach but introduced significant fictional elements, such as exaggerated depictions of Turkish brutality and hostility, which Hayes later acknowledged distorted reality and unfairly stereotyped the Turkish people. In response to the backlash, Hayes publicly apologized in 2004 for the negative portrayals, engaged in efforts to reconcile including speaking at Turkish law enforcement events, and has since produced works like the 2013 collection The Midnight Express Letters: From a Turkish Prison 1970-1975 and a one-man stage show, Riding the Midnight Express with Billy Hayes , premiered in 2013, to provide a more nuanced perspective on his ordeal.

Billy Hayes was born on April 3, 1947, in the Bronx borough of New York City . His family soon relocated to North Babylon on Long Island , where he was raised in a suburban, middle-class household during the post-World War II era. This environment exposed him to typical American youth pursuits of the time, including surfing along the local shores and riding motorcycles, activities his family later reminisced about as emblematic of his free-spirited pre-incarceration life.

Hayes' immediate family consisted of his parents, William Joseph Hayes and Dorothy Hayes, along with at least one sibling, a sister named Barbara. His father maintained conservative leanings but demonstrated nuanced views on drug policy, engaging Hayes in conversations about marijuana laws and penning a 1973 letter to U.S. Senator James Buckley to support its legalization amid Hayes' legal troubles. Such interactions highlight a family dynamic that balanced traditional values with openness to evolving social debates on substance use, potentially shaping Hayes' own exploratory tendencies.

As a child of the 1960s , Hayes embodied the era's seeker ethos, experimenting amid broader cultural shifts toward counterculture and personal liberation, though specific familial encouragement or discouragement of these pursuits remains undocumented beyond his father's policy advocacy. His upbringing in this Long Island community, coupled with familial support structures, provided a stable foundation before his drift into riskier behaviors associated with the hippie movement.

Hayes attended Marquette University in Milwaukee , Wisconsin , majoring in journalism during the late 1960s . In his senior year, he dropped out of the program, disappointing his parents, to pursue independent travel rather than completing his degree.

His academic focus on journalism reflected early interests in writing and communication, including creative writing pursuits alongside studies aimed at a potential career in advertising . These inclinations aligned with broader curiosities about storytelling and global experiences, which influenced his decision to forgo formal graduation for firsthand exploration abroad.

Billy Hayes, an American college student from Long Island , New York, entered the hashish trade during the late 1960s, a period marked by expanding recreational drug use within counterculture circles in the United States.