Onscreen, The Winter Soldier may be in love with Captain America, the muscle-bound, borderline asexual superhero. “I’m with you till the end of the line,” they purr to each other, mid-embrace. And in the recently released Captain America: Civil War, Cap goes as far as breaking up The Avengers in part to help his time-hopping lifemate. There are indeed scores of Tumblr pages and slashfic fan art devoted to “Stucky”—a portmanteau of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.
In real life, the man who plays Bucky/Winter Soldier, Sebastian Stan, is decidedly hetero, having previously dated co-stars Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl), Jennifer Morrison (Once Upon a Time), and Margarita Levieva (Spread). And this week, the Romanian-American 33-year-old actor opened up about his first time(s) on the podcast The Drop-In with Will Malnati, hosted by the titular restaurateur.
“When was your first kiss?” asked Malnati.
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“I was 10, she was 16. I’m serious,” Stan replied. “She was 16. It was in Vienna…Basically, like, I was with my mom—a single mom—and she was busy teaching piano or whatever, and I had to get to school in the morning and sometimes she couldn’t take me. I was like 9 or 10 at this point. We had a family in the building we lived in that basically, um, they had an older daughter and she was 16 and went to the same school, because it was lower school through middle school, and so my Mom said, ‘Hey, do you mind when you go to the school in the morning’—and she used to take the trolley—‘do you mind if you take Sebastian with you?’”
“One day on the way over there I remember she leaned in for the situation,” added Stan. “She asked me, ‘Have you ever kissed anyone?’ and I said ‘no’ and then she said, ‘Do you want to?’ It was amazing. I wish I could remember her name. That’s what I remember as my first kiss.”
Malnati then asked Stan about his other big first—losing his virginity. And Stan was not only game, but gave quite the response.
“I think I lost my virginity pretty late. I was a senior in high school. I mean, that’s late, right? I don’t know. By today, probably ancient,” said Stan. “But I did at the Time Hotel in Times Square. That’s where I lost it.”
Pressed to explain further, Stan said he’d met a girl at Stagedoor Manor, a theatrical training camp in the Catskills for ages 8 to 17. She was two years older than him, but they stayed in touch for two years long-distance—sans cell phones. “I actually had told her that I wasn’t a virgin,” Stan said of his first time. “She’d said she was a virgin too, so she was also pretty late in the game, but I only did that because I wanted to seem like I knew what I was doing. Years later I actually told her, ‘No, I didn’t.’”
Asked if she was impressed by his performance, Stan laughed. “No, not at all. I was so freaked out. We rented out a hotel room, did it at the Time Hotel, and had a McDonald’s happy meal afterwards. I swear to god. I will not name her, but god bless her—she’s married now.”
Stan said that, while still a senior in high school, he’d travel from Rockland County, New York, into New York City on weekends to hang out with his girlfriend. “She was a freshman at Carleton University and she transferred to NYU for her sophomore year, and I was still in high school and I was finishing up my senior year. So every weekend, I would go to New York and spend it with her while she was at NYU,” recalled Stan. “She had a roommate and we could never really do anything, so I would find an excuse why I needed some money, and together we would save for a minute, and then plan, and then rent a hotel room.” “We also were at The Paramount Hotel, and we were also at The Hilton Hotel on 53rd and 6th,” he added. “But you know, look… it was love.”
