Staff Writer
Actress and former model, Portia de Rossi has been open about her struggles with an eating disorder and with her sexuality since writing her 2010 book, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain. In a new episode of the Lifetime show, The Conversation With Amanda de Cadenet, de Rossi reveals that during her struggles with her sexuality, before her 2005 coming out, her eating disorder was the only thing that kept her company. She describes her eating disorder saying, “It was like a lover, it was like somebody who never left me… a thought that would always keep me excited, interested, and focused.”
Her struggle is similar to many in the LGBTQ community, except she was a public figure starring on
Ally McBeal, living with a fear that somehow people would know that she was a lesbian. De Rossi “just didn’t want to be a lesbian” and said that she had “never met one” and “thought they were strange.” She attributes this fear to
causing her eating disorder. De Rossi went from being a closeted actress to being out and married to one of the most well known lesbians, Ellen DeGeneres. The two
married in 2008, during the few months when California had marriage equality.