Aug. 30 (UPI) — Colton Haynes called out Hollywood for homophobia in a series of tweets this week.
The 29-year-old actor said Tuesday that directors and producers focus too much on gay actors’ personal lives while casting.
“Hollywood is so [expletive] up. So much of the focus in on your personal life & has nothing to do with the talent you have to bring to the table,” Haynes wrote to his 1.9 million Twitter followers.
“Thank god for Ryan Murphy, Greg Berlanti, & Jeff Davis,” he said of Murphy, Berlanti and Davis, whom he worked with on American Horror Story, Arrow and Teen Wolf, respectively. “They believe gay actors are more than just their personal lives.”
“So disappointed in how Hollywood cant understand that playing a character has nothing to do with how u live your personal life,” the star added.
Haynes, who publicly came out as gay in May 2016, said in an interview with Radio Andy in June that he was told he “could not be gay” and a successful actor in Hollywood.
“I was literally told from the day that I moved to Los Angeles that I could not be gay because I wouldn’t work,” the star told host Andy Cohen. “Then I was with my management team and a team of people that just literally told me I couldn’t be this way.”
“They tried to set me up with girls,” he recalled. “I was rumored to date Lauren Conrad for six months because they were kind of angling a story. And then I dated every other young person, which of course I didn’t date.”
Haynes will play Detective Samuels in American Horror Story: Cult, which premieres Sept. 5 on FX. He promoted the series by sharing a photo of himself in character Wednesday on Instagram.
“Less than one week until #AHScult …here’s a pic of Detective Samuels angrily posing in front of a scary clown @ahsfx,” the actor captioned the image.