(Screenshot courtesy of YouTube)

“Teen Wolf” and “The Leftovers” actor Charlie Carver came out in a five-part post on Instagram on Monday.

The 27-year-old posted a photo of the quote “Be Who You Needed When You Were Younger” and then added a five-part written caption to the photo.

“As a young boy, I knew I wanted to be an actor. I knew I wanted to be a lot of things… It was around that age that I also knew, however abstractly, that I was different from some of the other boys in my grade,” Carver writes. “Over time, this abstract ‘knowing’ grew and articulated itself through a painful gestation marked by feelings of despair and alienation, ending in a climax of saying three words out loud: ‘I am gay.'”

Carver went on to say that he was fearful to come out because of his acting career.

“As an actor, I believed that my responsibility to the craft and the business was to remain benevolently neutral – I was a canvas, a chameleon, the next character. For the most part I had a duty to stay a possibility in the eye of casting, directors, and the public,” Carver writes. “If I came out, I feared I would be limiting myself to a type, to a perception with limits that I was not professionally comfortable with.”

Eventually Carver realized that this didn’t have to be the case and is grateful to those people who helped him realize that.

“So now, let the record show this – I self-identify as gay… I owe it to myself, more than anything, to be who I needed when I was younger,” Carver writes.

The actor has played gay characters, such as in “I Am Michael” where he shared a threesome with James Franco and Zachary Quinto, but this is the first time he has come out publicly.

Carver also noted that his twin brother and fellow actor Max Carver is “just as cool for being straight.”