More than a year after coming out as gay, Colton Haynes is still struggling with mainstream Hollywood’s limited view of the LGBTQ community.
On Monday, the 29-year-old “Teen Wolf” and “Arrow” star opened up about his frustrations in a series of fiery tweets. Blasting Hollywood as “fucked up,” Haynes argued that the movie industry emphasized actors’ personal lives over their actual talent.
Nonetheless, the actor praised writer-producers Ryan Murphy, Greg Berlanti and Jeff Davis for believing that “gay actors are more than just their personal lives.”
It should be noted that each of those Hollywood heavyweights are openly gay and have played critical roles in Haynes’ career. Davis, 42, is the creator of “Teen Wolf,” while Berlanti, 45, was an executive producer of “Arrow.” Meanwhile, Haynes appeared in “Scream Queens,” and will have a recurring role “American Horror Story: Cult,” both of which were co-created by Murphy, 51.
The actor then concluded:
It’s unclear what triggered Haynes’ tweets, especially since both his career and personal life appear to be on the upswing. The actor appeared alongside Scarlett Johansson and Kate McKinnon in “Rough Night,” which hit theaters in June, and returns to TV Sept. 5 with “American Horror Story: Cult.”
In March he revealed on Instagram that he and Jeff Leatham, an artistic director and florist, had gotten engaged in Los Cabos, Mexico.
Speaking to HuffPost in June, Haynes said his career “became the best it’s ever been” in the year since he’d come out in an Entertainment Weekly interview. “I’ve been told by so many people that you cannot be out and have a career. Literally people would set me up with girls for press,” he said. “Now I live a more free and open life. It’s nice ― people have now started giving me work because of it, and it’s been really awesome.”
His criticisms of Hollywood's limited view of the queer community, however, are not without merit. GLAAD’s 2017 Studio Responsibility Index found that only 18.4 percent of 125 major movies released in 2016 featured characters who identified as LGBTQ.
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