British actor, singer and dancer, Layton Williams (27) spoke to Attitude magazine and Jaguar to proudly share his journey to success by embracing “100% his authentic self” in a recent content series.
The actor, the first-ever black queer to take the role of Billy Elliot in London’s West End musical at the age of 12, has gone on to star in TV hits such as ‘Bad Education’ and ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’ since carving out a new benchmark for black queer performers.
An active LGBTQ+ voice on social media, Williams confides; “Depending on how your life panned out, you have to work a little bit harder sometimes. Well, I feel I have”.
“I feel like I’ve always known that I was a little bit different, but when you grow up and you’re not really surrounded by people that are like you, or you don’t have anything to compare it to, you just crack on,” he reflected.
Manchester-born Layton speaks openly about his personal and career struggles on location in Palm Springs, California, sharing anecdotes from his past with other queer creatives who’ve followed the path to radical acceptance.
Daniel and Layton chatted about their careers and what brought them to where they are now: “When I was about eleven years old I kind of stumbled into performing and it was one of those things that kind of just crept up. Like, it wasn’t necessarily something where I woke up and was like ‘I want to be a star’.” told the actor.
Layton leveraged his success as the second-longest running performer of ‘Billy’ in the West Ends’ show to propel him to even greater heights, with scene-stealing turns in TV series including ‘Beautiful People’ and ‘Bad Education’. The Manchester-born actor has since landed the coveted role of Jamie New in ‘Everybody’s Talking About Jamie’, which will travel to Los Angeles for the musical’s hotly anticipated US debut.
You can watch the full interview and learn more about Jaguar’s partnership with Attitude here: https://www.jaguar.co.uk/partnerships/jaguar-x-attitude.html
About Author
