When Portia de Rossi was told that she was to be honored with the Visibility Award at Saturday night’s Human Rights Campaign Gala in Los Angeles, the actress took the news with her usual combination of humility and humor. “It mean’s that I’m not invisible,” she says with a laugh, “so that’s a good thing.”
But all quips aside, there was a very real, and very painful period in de Rossi’s life in which the stunning star of ABC’s Better Off Ted had wished that she, or at least parts of her, had been invisible.
“When I started my career as an actress,” she tells Tonic, “I was extremely closeted, and I was terribly afraid that if anybody found out, I wouldn’t have a career.”
The theme of the awards dinner, which also honored comedian Kathy Griffin and US Senator Barbara Boxer, was “Speak the Truth,” and de Rossi quickly erased any doubt that the evening’s credo was a notion that she was not comfortable with.
“Now, as an actor,” she says, “I think it’s incredibly important to represent the gay community because it’s so much easier not to. It’s so much easier to pass as being straight, and I got by for a long time that way, but getting by is not really a way to live your life.”
De Rossi never set out to be a role model, few people do, but after a decade of success in an industry that values subterfuge over substance, the actress seemed more than willing to welcome the burden of that title on her slender shoulders. “The only way you get to be a role model really is to step out of your comfort zone,” she tells Tonic, “and show people that you’re just like everybody else and that you can put your selfishness aside.”
And step out of her comfort zone she did, into a public and loving marriage with her partner Ellen DeGeneres and to the slew of television roles that had her playing hilariously predatory heterosexual women. With a mixture of bemusement and wisdom, de Rossi can look back at her former self and see the terrified girl that she once was, and the confident, successful woman that she has become. “Passing as something that you’re not, hiding, and living that kind of a lie is really toxic, and it doesn’t help you,” she says, “and it certainly doesn’t help anybody else. I think that’s what we’re all here for — to be able to do whatever we can to move it forward.”
Photos: Top by PR Photos; bottom by Reagan Alexander.