I try not to feed that particular fire. I am all for the salt and pepper in my hair. I am all about stepping into my inner elder and honoring the fact that I’m a man of a certain age with all that experience behind me, and that shows up in my walk and my talk and my face. And that’s something to be embraced.

You’ve spoken and written about your experience with depression and, when you were younger, feelings of suicide, and subsequent coping mechanisms.

It is something that is near and dear to me. I’ve walked a long road and have struggled with depression on and off for decades, and making sure that I continue to vibrate at the right frequency is my priority. And that looks like having a self-care routine in place that includes meditation and exercise and prayer and a good night’s sleep and diet and writing and sitting in a circle with a group of men like the Mankind Project.

Culturally, there’s a wall of silence that we create because we don’t know how to have that conversation yet, because that requires building a vocabulary we don’t have. Meanwhile, people are suffering and people are dying. It’s within our best interest to figure out what that conversation looks like and to have it openly and publicly without shame as quickly as possible — because if it’s not you, it’s someone you know.

You also publicly came out as gay in 2013. Why did you wait so long?

It felt like I was doing what I had to do at the time. I don’t think I could have done it any differently. There is a part of me that at 43 looks back at the window of opportunity and thinks, gee, wouldn’t it have been great if you’d been able to come out while “Prison Break” was on the air and at the height of the show’s popularity? But I wasn’t ready emotionally, spiritually. When I was a younger man, my career was very important to me, my life as an artist was very important to me. I had visions of things I wanted to have and do and achieve.

Now I put community first and family first and friends first. And I had an epiphany before the “Legends” opportunity came about, which was, when I die and I’m seated at the foot of my maker, whoever he or she may be, you know what we’re not going to be talking about? Ratings, my IMDB page, magazine covers, award shows. What we’ll be talking about, I imagine, is my growth as a man and a soul, and my career is a part of that, but it’s just a piece of the puzzle. It’s not the puzzle itself.