She's just celebrated her fifth wedding anniversary with Ellen DeGeneres, and now Portia de Rossi is opening up on coming to terms with being gay.

"I just didn't want to be a lesbian," de Rossi says in an interview on The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet.

"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.' 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 told de Cadenet.