《越狱》男主Miller人权运动年度晚宴演讲[1]_演讲

《越狱》男主Miller人权运动年度晚宴演讲[1]

"I" and "me" can be a lonely place and it will only get you so far.

By 2011, I had made the decision to walk away from acting and many of the things I had previously believed was so important to me. And after I had given up the scripts and the sets which I'd dreamed of as a child and the resulting attention and scrutiny, which I had not dreamed of as a child, the only thing I was left with was what I had when I started: "I" and "me," and it was not enough.

In 2012 I joined a men's group call The Man Kind Project, which is a men's group for all men and was introduced to the still foreign and still potentially threatening concepts of "us" and "we," to the idea of brotherhood, sisterhood, and community. And it was via that community that I became a member and proud supporter of the Human Rights Campaign. And it was via this community that I learned more about the persecution of my LGBT brothers and sisters in Russia.

Several weeks ago when I was drafting my letter to the St. Petersburg International Film Festival declining their invitation to attend, a small nagging voice in my head insisted that no one would notice. That no one was watching, or listening, or caring. But this time, finally, I knew that voice was wrong. I thought, If even one person notices this letter, in which I speak my truth, and integrate my small story into a much larger and more important one, it is worth sending. I thought, Let me be to someone else, what no one was to me. Let me send a message to that kid, maybe in America, maybe some place far overseas, maybe somewhere deep inside. A kid who's being targeted at home or at school or in the streets that someone IS watching, and listening, and caring. That there IS an "us." That there IS a "we," and that kid or teenager or adult is loved and they are not alone.