Indeed, Cruz has spent his acting career championing LGBTQ+ visibility. In 1994, at 20 years old, he became the first out gay actor to play an out lead character on U.S. primetime television: 15-year-old Enrique “Rickie” Vasquez on the ABC teen drama My So-Called Life. More recently, on Star Trek: Discovery (2017-2024), he portrayed one half of the first televised same-sex couple in the Star Trek universe. “The way that we revealed ourselves as a people—as queer people, and especially queer people of color—through the medium of television and film, and the stories we told onstage, was changing the way that people felt about us,” Cruz, who is Puerto Rican, told Feldman. “And that work correlates directly to what I feel is my most important work—which is helping young people understand that they are seen.”
Offscreen, Cruz—who was one of 14 individuals selected for TIME’s inaugural Visionaries list in June—has advocated for the LGBTQ+ community for decades, including as a board member, director of entertainment partnerships, and national spokesperson for GLAAD; a field organizer for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force; and, since 2023, chair of the board of directors at the nonprofit Glisten (formerly GLSEN). In this role, he has helped advance the organization’s mission of making K-12 schools safer for LGBTQ+ students by combating discrimination, harassment, and bullying based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. “Everything I’ve [done] professionally or volunteer-wise is connected to the same goal, which is to have young people, especially young people of color, understand their power and that they can change this world,” he said.
That mission comes at a pivotal moment. According to the ACLU, there are 529 active bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. relating to curriculum censorship, school sports bans, gender-affirming care bans, and more. Cruz’s work at Glisten is finding ways for LGBTQ+ youth to create their own communities in school that empower and inspire each other. “How do we create young people who get so involved in their communities that they create the world that they know they deserve?” he asked. “It starts in a safe classroom.”
Cruz closed the conversation on a hopeful note, expressing confidence that today’s challenges will ultimately lead to lasting change: “I’ve never been more confident and more positive that we are going to get out of this moment and not just recreate something that was; we are going to build something bigger and new because we have to,” he told Feldman. “There’s no choice involved.”