Wentworth Miller says he tried to commit suicide more than once as a teenager as he was coming to terms with his sexual orientation. The actor, who came out publicly last month with an impassioned letter in which he turned down a visit to a film festival in Russia to protest the country’s barbaric treatment of LGBT people, opened up at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in Seattle on Saturday, reports US Weekly.

“The first time I tried to kill myself I was 15,” he said. “I waited until my family went away for the family and I was alone in the house and I swallowed a bottle of pills. 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.”

The actor, like many gay people, admitted he felt conspicuous as a teenager and tried to keep his secret hidden.

“Growing up I was a target,” he said. “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. A thousand ways to portray yourself to not live up to someone else’s standards of what was accepted.”

Miller, who starred in the hit television drama Prison Break, said he feared coming out sooner would have had a negative impact on his acting career.

“I had multiple opportunities to speak my truth, which was that I was gay,” Miller told the crowd. “But I chose not to. I was out in private, to family and friends … but professionally, publicly, I was not.”

Video: TMZ