Ryan Haywood

Ryan Haywood is an American voice actor, YouTube and Internet personality, web video star and former employee of Rooster Teeth Productions and the former 3rd main host in it's subsidiary Achievement Hunter. A former staff member of the Machinima production company Rooster Teeth and the third main host at Achievement Hunter, Ryan is also an animator, editor, producer, and technical director of the Red vs. Blue (2003). Ryan Haywood was born on December 6, 1980 in Columbus, Georgia, as James Ryan Haywood to David L. Edwards and Debbie Hoover. He is the youngest of three children; his older sister is Tanya Edwards and his older brother is Ryan Edwards. Originally while growing up in Georgia and before working at Achievement Hunter and Rooster Teeth, he was initially working as a professional male model while in high school in Georgia as stated in Let's Play - 7 Days to Die Part 3. These photos were released during the Extra Life stream once $200,000 had been raised. He claimed that he was in a magazine called Twist magazine. Along with the magazine, he also was in a runway show, where he was a gnome who stood on a mushroom. He did this in between his job as a pool cleaner, and his job at Rooster Teeth. One of his model pictures showed Ryan in his late teens to early twenties as an early adult. His hair used to be much longer when he was a model and he used to be skinnier and younger. According to the Twist magazine stats, Ryan made Twist magazine quite popular during the time he worked there. His parents used his middle name (Ryan) more often than his first name (James) and hence he prefers being called Ryan which is his stage name. There is also another Rooster Teeth employee also named James so he prefers being called Ryan to avoid confusion. For his education, he studied in high school while working as a model and starring in magazines. Some of Ryan's colleagues stated in their Sunday Drive "Let's Play" that Ryan graduated from Georgia Tech University and also went to college in Georgia Southern University. He later went to study abroad in England in Europe, getting degrees in Theater and Computer Animation. Whilst browsing Craigslist looking for job opportunities, Ryan found an open position in the Rooster Teeth Studios and Ryan applied. He got the job and started to work there and eventually moved there to Austin, Texas where he resides ever since. It wasn't until Episode 89 of the Minecraft Let's Play series where Ryan earned his title of Mad King. In general, after the infamous Episode 89, Ryan began to become one of the most influential gamers over the next few months and soon to be year. Ryan was about 33 years of age when the episode was launched to YouTube on February 7, 2014. He moved to Corpus Christi, Texas where he met Geoff Ramsey for employment at Rooster Teeth, later residing in Austin, Texas where he fully joined joined Rooster Teeth Productions and it's subsidiary Achievement Hunter. Ryan joined the Rooster Teeth to run their website and to work on their new Game Fails YouTube channel, which he still does as of today. As a member of the staff, he is in charge of managing the Rooster Teeth website and their Game Fails Channel on YouTube. He was also the technical director and animator for Red vs. Blue Season 10. He also helped create Rooster Teeth's subsidiary Achievement Hunter. As of April 2015, Ryan was one of the main hosts and dominant cast members at Achievement Hunter. His job at Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter consisted of hanging out with the rest of the boys, playing games with them, starring in Lets Plays, and include ideas on what games they should play or what sequels to video game franchises should include. He was actually the third Achievement Hunter member host to be hired and promoted to main host after Geoff Ramsey and Jack Pattillo. In early 2011, Achievement Hunter hired Ryan as an editor, crew member and recurring host; Haywood later began being featured in videos as a main host in March 2012, becoming one of the main crew members. As for what Achievement Hunter video Ryan first appeared in, Ryan claims that the first video he made for Achievement Hunter (outside of Game Fails) was the NYC tour video, titled "A video game tour of NYC" uploaded to YouTube by Rooster Teeth on June 10, 2011. The first video where he spoke in was the Witcher 2 Achievement Guide, titled "The Witcher 2: Librarian Achievement Guide", also uploaded to YouTube by Rooster Teeth on June 16, 2011. And his first Lets Play with the other guys was Mari0, the video titled "Let's Play - Mari0 - With Geoff, Gavin, Michael, and Ryan", published on March 26, 2012, the day where Ryan was promoted to a main host. He was also in "Dear YouTube" by Rooster Teeth, but was still working as a Rooster Teeth animator. Since then, he started working full-time for Achievement Hunter and starred as the third main host member including Let's Play and VS. He became friends with other members of Rooster Teeth, such as Meg Turney. He competed against Ray Narvaez Jr. in a Rooster Teeth sing-off on YouTube. Besides his work on Achievement Hunter, he was also the voice actor for Professor Peter Port in RWBY (2012), Lieutenant John Elizabeth Andersmith in Red vs. Blue (2003) and The Mad King on X-Ray and Vav (2014). While working at AH/RT, he began streaming on Twitch on April 30, 2016 under the channel SortamaliciousGaming. On October 7, 2020, Haywood was fired by Rooster Teeth for violating their Code of Conduct when it was discovered that he used his fame to groom underage fans. Over the subsequent weeks, allegations emerged that he groomed, manipulated, and slept with multiple women and underage girls over the course of his employment at Rooster Teeth. Other employees of Rooster Teeth - including frequent collaborators such as Jack Pattillo, Michael Jones, and Alfredo Diaz - confirmed that these allegations are true, and stated that they would begin to remove content that featured Haywood from Rooster Teeth platforms. Because some of his sexual misconduct involved interactions with his Twitch audience, Haywood was permanently banned by Twitch on January 20, 2021. He is married to his high school sweetheart Laurie Higg, now a veterinarian, and they live in Austin, Texas with their two children and pets. They have a son and a daughter.