Portia de Rossi has been pretty quiet about discussing her personal relationships with the media. But when James Lipton asked the Arrested Development and Ally McBeal actress during an interview with “Inside the Actors Studio” about the first time she came out as a lesbian in public, de Rossi finally decided it was time to tell the story.

She spoke candidly about her anxiety and fears. “Ellen and I had been together for a month and I was very, very nervous going to that (The Golden Globe Awards) because I knew that I was going to meet up with her after the show… we actually stepped out together as a couple but, for me, it was the first time that I stepped out as a gay woman.”

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Of course, we now know de Rossi as Ellen Degeneres’ wife of nine years. The couple seems perfectly happy, de Rossi even makes special guest appearances on Ellen’s hit television show. The pair also walks the red carpet together regularly for big time Hollywood events. But the truth is that de Rossi said that she simply did not want to be a lesbian.

The 40-year-old blond beauty recently admitted in an interview with Amanda de Cadenet, who has a show on Liftetime called, “The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet,” that she struggled with the idea of being gay. “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.’ 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.”

You can check out de Rossi’s extremely revealing interview with de Cadenet in its entirety here:

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