Video: Out actor Wentworth Miller shares that he tried to kill himself at 15: “I wanted out”

Over the weekend, Wentworth Miller made his first public appearance since coming out as a gay man.

He gave a powerful speech at the Human Rights Campaign dinner in Seattle and proved himself as a living example of It Gets Better.

“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.”

He told the crowd that his attempt was not a cry for help – he just wanted out.

“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.”

Wentworth came out last month through a letter to a film festival in St. Petersburg, Russia, declining an invitation because of Russia’s anti-gay laws.

It had been a long time coming for the former star of Prison Break.

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