Portia De Rossi

Portia de Rossi is a lesbian Australian actress who spoke publicly about her sexuality for the first time in 2005, in interviews with The Advocate and Details, in the context of her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres -- a relationship she had kept private despite intense speculation, and which began in late 2004 after the two met backstage at an awards show. De Rossi and DeGeneres married in August 2008, one of the first same-sex marriages performed in California after the state's Supreme Court ruling, and their marriage has endured as one of the most visible in LGBTQ+ public life. De Rossi has spoken about accepting her own sexuality as long and difficult -- shaped by years in an industry where being gay was considered professionally dangerous, and by a psychology of self-denial she addressed in her 2010 memoir Unbearable Lightness, which also chronicled her struggle with anorexia. She is best known as Lindsay Bluth Funke in Arrested Development (2003), and for her work in Ally McBeal (1997) and Better Off Ted (2009). Her visibility as a married lesbian woman in Hollywood has been a consistent source of representation for decades.