Haley was born in Seattle, Washington to a large Catholic family, the fifth of six children. His father was an airline executive and his mother was a homemaker and part-time maid. His father is of Irish and Italian descent, which is where he gets his Italian middle name Carlo. At the age of three his family moved to Saint-Jovite, Quebec and he was put in a boarding home where he learned to speak fluent French. He disliked the experience so much that upon his return to Seattle 18 months later, he refused to speak the language except to translate for his younger sister, who only spoke French. He began acting as a child in the Seattle area doing community and school theater. As a teenager, he stumbled upon the film set of Scorchy (1976) in downtown Seattle. After seeing some of the movie being filmed, jumping into a few shots as an extra and meeting the star, Connie Stevens, he decided to pursue a career in show Business.