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After being brave enough to both come out of the closet and take a stand against the Russian government’s anti-gay laws, actor Wentworth Miller is now opening up about another dark secret.

Miller admits that before coming out as gay, he attempted to commit suicide several times.

“The first time I tried to kill myself I was 15. I waited until my family went away for the family vacation and I was alone in the house and I swallowed a bottle of pills,” he revealed to a large audience at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in Seattle last week. “I don’t remember what happened over the next couple of days but I’m pretty sure come Monday morning I was on the bus back to school pretending everything was fine.

“Growing up I was a target,” he continued. “Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test and there was a thousand ways to fail,” he said. “A thousand ways to portray yourself to not live up to someone else’s standards of what was accepted.”

The  actor also admitted that it made him nervous to come out early in his career.

“I had multiple opportunities to speak my truth, which is that I was gay, but I chose not to. I was out privately to family and friends — publicly, I was not.” He continued: “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.”

Now Miller joins the increasing number of celebrities who are embracing and discussing their sexuality as well the struggle to come out. Raven-Symonè and NBA player Jason Collins are just two notable stars to come out in recent months.

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