Ezra Miller comes out as gay, tells kids life is ‘really cool’

Ezra Miller, the American actor who starred alongside Tilda Swinton in last year’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, has come out as gay in an interview with Out magazine.

While promoting his new film, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Miller spoke openly about his own sexuality. In the interview with Out, Miller said, “I’m queer. I have a lot of really wonderful friends who are of very different sexes and genders. I am very much in love with no one in particular. I’ve been trying to figure out relationships, you know? Directed by Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is based on his own novel. Through the eyes of a teenage boy, it tells a story of introversion and awkward adolescence, touching on subjects of drugs, homosexuality, sex and suicide. As he explains, Miller read the book as a boy after it was recommended to him by two of his friends. “I was Charlie’s age. One [friend] said, ‘This is my favorite book.’ The other said, ‘This book saved my life.’ So I read it and I found one of the best mythological maps for being a fucked-up kid.” The 19-year-old actor tells Out that as a young child himself he suffered from a speech impediment, and to help control it, took up opera singing. He joined New York’s Metropolitan Opera Children’s Chorus and appeared in the premiere of White Room (Philip Glass). However, other children mocked him for his condition and his best friend turned on him after Miller tried to kiss him. “He had some macho realization that led him to believe that I was the problem. So I went from having a stutter to being a totally gay little opera singer to being, like, a really confused queer adolescent,” he said. Life is cool Miller goes on to confide that he was often suicidal as a kid: “A lot of [adolescence] left me wanting to end my own life, just give up. It feels like the whole world – because it is. It’s your whole world.” But, speaking positively about his new film, the teenage actor says, “I just want kids in all situations to hold on […] life is a really, really cool ride. It’s really amazing the type of shit you can get up to if you endure. Like, you can do anything you want if you can survive.” In 2008, Ezra Miller appeared in his first film Antonio Campos’s Afterschool. Other film roles and some TV work led to his portrayal of Kevin Khatchadourian in Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to talk About Kevin – based on the eponymous novel by Lionel Shriver – which earned Miller nominations for Best Young Performer (Broadcasts Film Critics Association) and Best Supporting Actor (British Independent Film). The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which also stars Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson) and Emma Watson (Harry Potter), is scheduled for a September release.