Jane Lynch thanks Ellen DeGeneres for helping her come out
The Glee actor has made a heartfelt thanks to the talk show host in a new video short – praising the LGBT pioneer for her charity work.
The actress is best known for her role as Sue Sylvester on Glee, as well as appearing in The L Word, Wreck-it Ralph and Two and a Half Men.
She credits DeGeneres for paving the way for herself and other LGBT female actors to be out and proud in their work.
The award-winning actress has praised the power and influence DeGeneres’ coming out had in the media for her and others in a video for Makers – the “largest online collection of women’s stories”.
Lynch has previously opened up about how she lived a life of “secrecy” during her struggle to accept her sexual orientation as a teenager.
The actress said: “It was almost like I had a disease I had been diagnosed. I had a journal and… I remember I wrote, ‘I am gay. No one can ever know this.’
”It led to a life of secrecy that I had to unravel.”
Lynch knew she was different from her other female classmates but didn’t realise that she was a lesbian until she was 14.
She said: “I identified more with boy things. I enjoyed dressing like a boy.
“The boys stopped wanting to play with me when I got to be about 10 and I had to fight to play baseball.”
Lynch admits to being scared of rejection and that to be, “ostracised would have been the worst thing.”
Watch the full video here.
