Wentworth Miller tried suicide before coming out

Prison Break star Wentworth Miller, who revealed last month that he's gay, says he tried to commit suicide "more than once" when he was growing up because the pain of coming to terms with his sexual orientation overwhelmed him at times.

Miller made the comments at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in Seattle on Saturday night. TMZ posted video from the event.

Miller, 41, says his first suicide attempt happened when he was 15 years old, Us Weekly reports.

"The first time I tried to kill myself I was 15," he 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 of days, but I'm pretty sure come Monday morning I was on the bus back to school pretending everything was fine."

He also says he hid his homosexuality from the public for a long time because he feared it would harm his acting 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 told the audience.

Miller made headlines in August when he opened up about his sexuality in a letter rejecting an invitation to a film festival in Russia. "As a gay man, I must decline," he wrote to the organizers of the St. Petersburg International Film Festival. "I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government."

Russia's recent crackdown on homosexuals has drawn international condemnation as the country prepares to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.