power-up circuitry for a MCU in series with a load

[lixen]

I'm trying to create power-up circuitry for a MCU that will be place in series with a load it will control. The system will be powered by mains (240V AC). The MCU will be driving a power MOSFET in order to control the current through the load. Due to the nature of the load (LED), the total current through it must be practically zero (<1mA) for it to turn off. This means the power circuitry can only draw current during the parts of the mains sine wave that are below the threshold voltage for my LED load.

To obtain this, I came up with the following:

In the picture, only the power-up circuitry is present, V2 is mains voltage, V1 is there to simulate the MCU. The power MOSFET that switches the load on or off is not present in the picture.

M1 is a depletion mode MOSFET. When powering up the system, M1 will act as a closed switch and the capacitor will charge up. This capacitor will be the input for a linear regulator that provides power to the MCU. As soon as the MCU is powered up, it has control over when the capacitor can be charged. It controls this by turning M2 on (closed switch), then due to the zener D6, Vgs(M1) will be -10V and M1 will act as open switch. Turning M2 off will lead to R1 acting to equalize gate and source of M1, so Vgs will be 0 again and it will act as closed switch.

In my LTspice simulation, the circuit is behaving as anticipated:

Now on to the issue: when implementing this on breadboard, Vgs of M1 will remain 0V instead of going to -10V when closing the M2 switch. The MOSFET I use for M1 is DN2540N5. During troubleshooting this, I tried replacing M1 by a short, and in that scenario, the voltage across D6 does become -10V as expected. Any ideas why this isn't working as desired with M1 in place? Did I overlook something? What else can I do to troubleshoot this? Or do you know of a better way to obtain the behavior I need?