Photo: Gaten Matarazzo/Instagram
Gaten Matarazzois ready for surgery number four.
TheStranger Thingsstar, 17, shared a photo on Wednesday from the hospital before heading into surgery for hiscleidocranial dysplasia, a rare genetic disorder that affects the growth of his bones and teeth.
“Surgery number 4! This is a big one!”he wrote on Instagram.
“There’s a one in a million chance that you have of getting it — most likely you get it from a parent, but it just happened for me,” he said in 2016. “I have a very mild case so it doesn’t affect me as much, but it can be a very difficult condition to have.”
He does, however, think that it affected his career.
“It’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been getting roles, because of my lisp, and the teeth situation, and my height,”he said in 2018, during an appearance onThe Doctors. “That affected pretty much everything. I would go three times a week for auditions all the time and get constant ‘no.’ ”
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That all changed in 2015, when he landed therole of Dustin onStranger Things. Matarazzo says his disorder actually helped him get the part.
“It really started out when I was stretching in the audition room,” he said. “They were like ‘Wait, wait, wait what did you just do?’ and I said, ‘What? I’m stretching’ and they said ‘No, do it again and they said ‘Why do you do that? Your shoulders are touching.’ … So I started explaining what it was and how I had a condition from birth that affects my teeth and everything. That’s why I was missing teeth in the first season, and I still have my appliance in right now.”
Matarazzo now works withCCD Smiles, a non-profit organization that raises money and awareness for people with the condition. He told PEOPLE in 2016 that his role onStranger Thingshelped bring more attention to CCD.
source: people.com
