‘Stranger Things’ star

     Gaten Matarazzo opens up about his rare genetic disorder

    《怪奇物语》小主角伽塔·马塔拉佐受基因突变疾病困扰，与观众坦诚分享感受

    Nominees for the 2017 Golden Globes have officially been announced and Netflix’s hit sci-fi series “Stranger Things” earned a nomination in the coveted best television series, drama category.

    “Stranger Things,” Netflix’s smash summer hit, boasted a wealth of buzz-worthy performances, from the triumphant return of Winona Ryder to the introduction of Meryl-Streep-in-training Millie Bobby Brown. But the actor who made the largest impression on the hearts of viewers was Gaten Matarazzo, who played sweet Dustin. Recently, Matarazzo opened up about his disability, cleidocranial dysplasia, and the Internet responded with an outpouring of love.

    Matarazzo happens to suffer from a condition called cleidocranial dysplasia, which affects the growth of bones and teeth. It also previously seemed to affect Matarazzo ability to get roles, as many showrunners refused to hire him because of it.

    Fortunately “Stranger Things” producers Duffer Brothers were the complete opposite — they even worked the condition into the show. Now that Matarazzo is one of the hottest child actors in Hollywood, he’s using the platform to raise awareness for cleidocranial dysplasia.

    “It’s a condition where you’re born without your collarbones,” he told in a recent interview. “I don’t have any. It affects your facial growth, your skull growth, your teeth — that’s why I don’t have any [teeth], these are fake right here. I have teeth, but they’re all baby teeth. I need a lot of surgery.”

    “I have a really mild case and a lot of people have it really worse than I do,” Matarazzo continued. “And I feel like putting it into the show really raised awareness for it. And I’m lucky that mine is very mild, but now that it’s in my genes … it’s usually passed on by genes, it wasn’t for me, it just happened. Now that it’s in my genes I have a 50-percent chance of passing it down in my genes and it could be much worse for them.”

    There’s no magic bullet or cure for cleidocranial dysplasia. So Matarazzo’s goal when talking about it is to educate people about the condition in the hopes that the stigma surrounding it — a stigma that almost robbed Matarazzo of an acting career — goes away.

    “I just wanna raise awareness for it and let people know it’s not something that they should be afraid of showing,” he finished.

    The reaction to the segment has been overwhelmingly positive, with some being moved to tears. (SD-Agencies)