Portia DeRossi On Her Sexuality: "I Just Didn't Want To Be A Lesbian"

We applaud her for being so candid!

Portia DeRossi opened up about her sexuality and how she feared coming out on a new episode of The Conversation with Amanda De Cadenet, and the 40-year-old actress offered some interesting insight as to why she had always believed being gay was "strange."

"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 explained.

"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," she added.

Her struggle for self acceptance led to a dangerous pattern of behavior before she finally went public in 2005.

"The thing that kept me company was my eating disorder. It was like a lover, it was somebody who never ever left me. Like a thought that would always keep me excited, interested and focused. It's adrenaline," she confessed.

We're happy she found true love and happiness with wife Ellen Degeneres!