Portia de Rossi: “I just didn’t want to be a lesbian”

In a candid American TV interview, Aussie girl and Hollywood actress, Portia de Rossi, has spoken of her struggle with coming out and being a lesbian.

Eventually coming out in 2005, de Rossi was reportedly extremely nervous during the period, telling reporters that she used to perceive being gay as “strange,” largely due to the lack of notable famous lesbian figures.

“I just didn’t want to be a lesbian. I’d never met one for a start and I just thought they were strange and that they hated men and they were very serious and I had these ridiculous images in my head and there were no out celebrities or politicians or anybody that I could look to and go, ‘Oh, I could be like that,’”she said in the interview.

“There was nobody that I could say, ‘I could date her and I want to be like her.’ I just kind of thought I don’t want to live like this. I don’t have to, I don’t need to, I just shut down the emotional life … I didn’t like people thinking of me as a sexual being, and I was just terrified that people would know that I was gay.”

And how things have turned around for her. Fast-forward less than a decade an now de Rossi IS one of many notable famous lesbian figures. And married to an arguably even more notable lesbian – talk show queen Ellen DeGeneres.