Miriam Margolyes Says She Regrets Coming Out To Her Mother

British-Australian comedian and actor Miriam Margolyes has said she regrets coming out to her mother. “Coming out is an indulgence. If you tell people who can’t bear the information, you’re hurting them and it’s not kind,” Margolyes said during her appearance on the show Loose Women. 

In her recently published memoir This Much is True, Margolyes revealed that her mother had a stroke a few days after she told her parents that she was a lesbian and was seeing a woman named Heather.

Margolyes has been in a relationship since 1968 with Heather Sutherland, now a retired Australian professor of Indonesian studies.

‘I Had Crushes On Girls’

 “At school, I’d had crushes on girls and they were all-consuming, but I didn’t have a mature loving relationship until I was 27. Once I found her, I knew,” Margolyes wrote.

When Margolyes told her parents, she said, they did not handle it well. They made her  “come into the drawing room and swear on the Torah never to have relations with a woman again.”

During her appearance on Tuesday’s Loose Women, Margolyes said she felt as though she was responsible for her mother’s health problems which led to her death in 1974.

“’They (the Margolyes family) brought me up to tell them everything. I was someone who was completely open with my family. It was natural that I would tell them,” she said.

“’Now I wish I hadn’t, I think it upset my mother terribly. I think she had a stroke, possibly, as a result.”

Regrets Coming Out To Her Mother

Margolyes said that her fellow actor Ian McKellen tried to stop her from blaming herself for her mother’s death.

“’Ian McKellen, my dear friend, disagrees with me on that, but I don’t care. That’s what I think, don’t tell people who can’t bear it.”

During her appearance on This Morning co-host Phillip Schofield said he was upset to hear the Harry Potter actress regretted coming out to her mother.

“One of the things that you regret, which I thought was really sad when I saw that, is that you came out to your parents and then it wasn’t long after that your mum had a stroke,” Schofield said.

“I always felt guilty about that,” Margolyes said to Schofield

“That’s why I say people shouldn’t come out to people who can’t handle it. It’s tough to keep it in because I want to share, and when I fell in love I wanted to tell everybody that I was in love.”

Making Sex Tapes

The two then discussed Schofield’s own coming out, which the TV host did via a social media post and an interview on This Morning in February last year.

“I mean you’ve been very brave, you came out…I sort of thought you might be gay,” Margolyes told Schofield.

Earlier this year Margolyes also revealed on This Morning that she has created multiple sex tapes. “I have to stress they were audiotapes, they were not visual,” she said on the show.

“They’re very exhausting because when you’re simulating orgasm as all of you out there will know.”

Margolyes’ memoir is available for purchase now and the actress has said it is a story about “being gay, Jewish and fat”.