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Portia de Rossi comes clean about how she used to “swallow her words instead of her food” in a new book that will address the darker period of her life before coming out and finding love with Ellen DeGeneres. In a forthcoming interview with the Advocate, de Rossi explains how much of her life when first breaking into Hollywood was a contradiction.

A “staunch feminist,” she first starred on the hit Ally McBeal, a show which prompted Time magazine to ask “Is Feminism Dead?” She also never used to talk politics, even when she first spoke about her relationship with DeGeneres in a 2005 issue of the The Advocate. Now, de Rossi finds herself in a powerful position to speak up for gay marriage, she says, and will do so in her book.

“I feel like my life can actually kind of stand for something.
And I don’t mean that in a self-aggrandizing way, like, ‘Look at me, I
can make a difference.’ But I feel like, maybe I get why I’m here,” she says.

During a recent appearance on The View to promote her sitcom Better Off Ted,
De Rossi dished it out to conservative host
Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the subject of gay marriage: “Without the word,
we don’t have equal rights…. Every citizen of this country should have
that right.”