The 39-year-old actor – who has been married to his husband Simon Hall since 2011 – has admitted he wrote his parents a letter explaining his sexuality and received “radio silence” from them for half a year before he finally got the courage to make a trip home to confront them.
He said: “I wrote a letter to my parents. I would have lost my sense of direction if I tried to do it in person. There was radio silence for a long, long time, at least six months.”
The ‘White Collar’ actor revealed his trip home resulted in a “huge fight” between himself and his parents, but once it was out of their systems they were able to learn “how to love each other” once again.
He added: “We got that out of the way, and we got down to the business of figuring out how to love each other.”
But Matt insists the healing process didn’t happen over night, and it took “years” before his family learned to accept him for who he is.
He said: “I would say within a matter of years we started to figure it out. It was a struggle. It’s a struggle for anybody to take their paradigms and set of beliefs and understandings and completely flip the script. So I’m empathetic toward everyone.”
And the ‘American Horror Story: Hotel’ actor insists he now wants to help inspire people in his position to start the conversation with their family.
He told OUT magazine: “I’m here to tell people it can get better. Because I had so many people in my life saying, ‘You need to get rid of all expectations — you need to cut them out.’ But I was like, ‘They’re my family.’”