Anyone who talks to Max Adler for two seconds will find that he is a jovial, compassionate and warm-hearted individual — nothing at all like the mean, slushie-throwing, New Directions-hating football jock fans everywhere loved to hate. It’s also hard to resist the 27-year-old’s dimpled smile and charming demeanor.

His role on the hit musical comedy series Glee as bully and closeted gay student Dave Karofsky seemed to gain him fame overnight. It goes to show that there is a right place and time for everything. The Arizona native had done various roles in several independent films, such as 23 Blast and Saugatuck Cures, before getting wind of the FOX network show (an appealing prospect for a former high school show choir performer) and landing the character. A minor role at first, once the episode “Never Been Kissed” aired, when Karofsky kisses the object of his bullying — flamboyant, openly gay Glee Club member Kurt Hummel (Chris Colfer) — Gleeks yearned for more. Karofsky became infamous, especially among the LGBT community. Glee creator Ryan Murphy was also impressed by Adler’s acting abilities and began writing more for him. The last episode in which he appears (as of now) from Season 3, the tormented Karofsky attempts suicide when outed publicly by his classmates, after months of identity issues and inner turmoil.

Glee is known for sending positive messages of morality through comedic and entertaining means, and this particular incident with Karofsky sparked a debate over LGBT youth suicides, after bullying was made a hot-button topic.

The brown-haired, brown-eyed Adler has since used his swift stardom to address these issues and make a difference. He is highly involved in the activist project “It Gets Better”— which aims to prevent suicide among LGBT teens — and “City Hearts: Kids Say Yes to the Arts,” for which he launched the Max Adler A-B-C Initiative as a way to get underprivileged kids involved in the arts and away from bullying their classmates. He is also an advocate for the Muscular Dystrophy Association in remembrance of his mother and grandmother, both who passed away from facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD).

It is obvious that Adler — now the newest addition to the ABC Family cast of Switched at Birth — is passionate about every project that he is a part of, and is grateful that his job as an actor could transform into something so much more than a job; that his influence can touch so many people’s lives and have an impact.

Through a phone interview, Adler invited GALO to take a closer look at his philanthropic escapades and why they are so dear to him, how friend and fellow actor Garrett Hedlund gave him the push he needed to pursue acting, and what ideas he has brewing for the future.

Editorial note: Portions of the interview have been edited and shortened.

GALO: Though you were born in Queens, your family soon after relocated to Arizona, and that’s where you grew up, attended high school, and were part of an All-State show choir. Is that how you were first inspired to pursue an acting career? Did that experience help you in landing your role on Glee or spur your interest in the show?

Max Adler: I think that being in my former high school was the infamous dream made to happen and realized. I did plays in the community and in middle schools and elementary schools. I was in the ensemble of Jesus Christ Superstar when I was 10-years-old. I had always been interested in doing it. The high school that I went to was pro performing arts and put a lot of money into arts programs. You got to travel and tour. It made it feel like it wasn’t an amateur high school because they were pretty nice productions. The feeling of being on stage and the camaraderie of cast and crew, and getting to do that every night, was too good to give up, and I just didn’t know what else I wanted to do. The feeling was too amazing to stop at high school, so I knew that I had to keep going. You might know Garrett Hedlund, he was a year ahead of me in high school, and Kellan Lutz. Garrett was another good reason too, because moving to L.A. and making it kind of seemed unrealistic. But Garrett — the year before I graduated — went and booked Troy, and, all of a sudden, I was doing high school shows, while he was in Spain shooting with Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom. I was like, “oh my gosh, this really just happened!” So, it made it seem a little more tangible for me. I went out right after high school to L.A.

It was pretty crazy that they were doing a show about show choir when that was kind of like my life. And the fact that Ryan Murphy was behind it was also a great thing for me because I love Nip/Tuck and Popular, and everything that he had done I thought was just gold. To get to be on a show about something that I knew from the mastermind behind Nip/Tuck was just too good to be true. But it was even cooler to go from being the show choir guy, whom I kind of played in real life, I suppose, to being the bad guy, who I never would have been in high school. It was even more fun; it was like the icing on the cake. And the audition for Glee wasn’t for a three year thing; it was just a one episode part where I throw a slushie and have one little scene. I was just excited for that, just to be on the show for a day. So what ended up happening was just really a dream come true.

GALO: Your character Dave Karofsky on Glee was originally supposed to be a minor role, until creator Ryan Murphy was so impressed with your performance that he wrote more for you. And especially after the episode when Dave kisses Kurt (Chris Colfer), fans everywhere, especially LGBT teens, wanted more from you. What does it mean to you to have such a big group of people supporting you and looking to your character as a role model? You once said that people thanked you because “they are Karofsky, they were Karofsky or they know a Karofsky.”

MA: It’s the biggest honor in the world. I mean, it really does mean the world to me to have that support and have people really connect with me and that role, and feel that it was real enough to relate to their own lives. It goes beyond just an actor getting a job. We’re all together in this world, we’re all connected, we’re making a difference here, and we’re doing something and seeing a change. That’s just the ultimate fan I could ever ask for.

I think people connected with that person, someone who kind of has this bravado on the outside, but on the inside, they’re tortured and struggling. I think that shed a light on so much, and that’s the genius of the writers — especially at that time when suicide because of bullying and cyber-bullying was getting out there and was the peak in the news. And, I think, shedding that light on the bully (and not just the victim) showed that there are a lot of insecurities and problems that lead them to bullying. A lot of bulbs clicked, and there was an understanding of who the bully is. I think the creators were brave to write that role for me. I never really thought about this, but a lot of responses from the fans were saying that usually a gay person, especially in high school, is portrayed in a very stereotypically flamboyant way, and that people had never seen this manly, gruff guy’s guy portrayed as a vulnerable, sensitive gay high school student. I think that was a release for a lot of people too, to show that you don’t have to act or look a certain way to be a certain way. It was a whole myriad of things that happened in that episode that I think a lot of people connected with. I was just incredibly honored to be a part of that.
(Interview continued on next page)