The 27-year-old wrote an Instagram essay about his decision to open up about his sexuality.
Another Teen Wolf star is opening up about his sexuality.
A week after Colton Haynes addressed his “secret gay past,” Charlie Carver came out in a five-part Instagram essay, explaining how a simple quote -- “Be who you needed when you were younger.” -- inspired him to open up about his sexuality.
“As a young boy, I knew I wanted to be an actor. I knew I wanted to be a lot of things!” Carver wrote. “It was around that age that I also knew, however abstractly, that I was different from some of the other boys in my grade. Over time, this abstract ‘knowing’ grew…ending in a climax of saying three words out loud: ‘I am gay.’”
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Carver said his relationship to his sexuality became “more complicated” when he started professionally acting.
“At nineteen, I started working in Hollywood. It was a dream come true,” he explained. “Coupled with the overwhelming sense of excitement was an equally overwhelming feeling of dread-- I would ‘have to’ bisect myself into two halves, a public and private persona, the former vigilantly monitored, censored, and sterilized of anything that could reveal how I self-identified in the latter.”
Though the 27-year-old actor, who has gone on to appear in HBO’s The Leftovers, admitted that he feared coming out would limit the roles he would be given, Carver revealed, “I hadn’t really ever been ‘in.’”
“I tried to live as authentically as I’ve known how to, as a gay guy, since that concept became available to me, only once or twice intentionally dodging the ever ill-timed question with the subtext that might have as well read ‘ARE YOU GAY???’” he noted. “I’ve lived ‘out,’ not feeling the need to announce so. I was comfortably out in my private life. And for a time, that was enough.”
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In the end, Carver wanted to live up to that inspirational quote.
“Let the record show this-- I self-identify as gay,” he announced. “Does that really matter anymore? As a young man, I needed a young man in Hollywood to say that -- and without being a d*ck about it, I owe it to myself, more than anything, to be who I needed when I was younger.”
Before signing off, Charlie gave a shout-out to his twin brother and fellow Teen Wolf star, Max Carver, writing, “And let the record show my twin brother is just as cool for being straight.”
Meanwhile, Colton Haynes shared an awesome message for anyone curious about his sexuality. Find out what the Arrow star had to say:
