Wentworth Miller: Gay Actor Admits To Suicide Attempt At 15 Before Coming Out
Wentworth Miller, who recently came out as gay, has revealed that his journey to recently coming out wasn't easy.
E! has reported that the "Prison Break" star admitted to trying to commit suicide as a teenager, at a Human Rights Campaign gala in Seattle on Saturday.
"The first time I tried to kill myself I was 15," Miller said. "I waited until my family went away for the weekend and I was alone in the house and I swallowed a bottle of pills. I don't remember what happened over the next couple days, but I'm pretty sure come Monday morning I was on a bus back to school pretending everything was fine. And when someone asked me if that was a cry for help, I say no, because I told no one."
The 41-year-old actor then went on to say he was a target growing up.
"Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way," he said. "Every day was a test and there was a thousand ways to fail. A thousand ways to portray yourself to not live up to someone else's standards of what was accepted."
"I had multiple opportunities to speak my truth, which is that I was gay, but I chose not to," he continued "I was out privately to family and friends-publicly, I was not. I chose to lie-when I thought about the possibility of coming out, how that might impact me and the career I worked so hard for, I was filled with fear."
Miller overcame his fear last month, when he publicly came out as gay after he was invited to a film festival in Russia, where public discussion of gay rights and "gay propaganda" have been banned.
His letter to the film festival director was posted on the GLAAD website.