For these celebs, love has no gender boundaries — and they aren’t afraid to talk about it. In recent years, so many stars have come forward to discuss their sexuality: how they released they were attracted to more than one gender, what labels they’ve found best fit them, and more. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including stars like Angelina Jolie, Lady Gaga, Drew Barrymore, and more, have come out as bisexual, pansexual, sexually fluid, or queer, and it’s a big, big deal for bi visibility.
While a number of stars have only recently felt comfortable coming forward about their sexuality, others — like Thandie Newton — have been proudly proclaiming their sexuality for years. Thandie Newton reflected on sexuality with The Advocate back in 2008, musing that there’s no difference between being with a man or a woman. “We’re all potentially bisexual; it all depends on your circle, your upbringing, and all kinds of things,” she said. “Or maybe I’m just talking about myself. I could’ve easily fallen in love with a woman over a man.”
Drew Barrymore parsed her words even less, in an interview with Contact back in 2003. “Do I like women sexually? Yeah, I do. Totally. I have always considered myself bisexual,” the actress said.
And Kesha shared Newton’s feelings in an interview with Seventeen in 2013. “I don’t love just men. I love people,” the singer said. “It’s not about a gender. It’s just about the spirit that exudes from that other person you’re with.”
Love is love is love, and no matter who you love and who you’re with, we love love and honor love in all its forms. Ahead, discover 28 celebrities who have spoken up about not identifying as straight — and how they identify instead.
A version of this article was originally published September 2019.
Jason Mraz
“I’ve had experiences with men, even while I was dating the woman who became my wife,” Mraz told Billboard. “It was like, ‘Wow, does that mean I am gay?’ And my wife laid it out for me. She calls it ‘two spirit,’ which is what the Native Americans call someone who can love both man and woman. I really like that.”
Cara Delevingne
“A lot of the friends I have who are straight have such an old way of thinking,” Delevingne told Glamour. “It’s ‘So you’re just gay, right?’ [They] don’t understand it. [If] I’m like, ‘Oh, I really like this guy,’ [they’re like], ‘But you’re gay.’ I’m like, ‘No, you’re so annoying!’”
Kristen Stewart
“It’s cool that you don’t have to nail everything down any more. That whole certainty about whether you’re straight or gay or whatever,” Stewart told The Guardian. “You’re not confused if you’re bisexual. It’s not confusing at all. For me, it’s quite the opposite.”
Lilly Singh
“Female Coloured Bisexual,” Singh wrote on Twitter in February 2019. “Throughout my life these have proven to be obstacles from time to time. But now I’m fully embracing them as my superpowers. No matter how many ‘boxes’ you check, I encourage you to do the same x.”
Aubrey Plaza
“Girls are into me — that’s no secret. Hey, I’m into them too,” Plaza told Advocate. “I fall in love with girls and guys. I can’t help it.”
Tess Holliday
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to my own queerness,” Holliday told Nylon. “And I think the word pansexual speaks to me more than bi does.’”
Alia Shawkat
“I was a tomboy growing up, and I remember my mom asking me when I was 10, ‘Are you attracted to boys or girls?’” Shawkat shared with Out. “I said I don’t know. Now I consider myself bisexual, and I think balancing my male and female energies has been a big part of me growing as an actor.”
Lucas Hedges
“I felt ashamed that I wasn’t 100 percent, because it was clear that one side of sexuality presents issues, and the other doesn’t as much,” Hedges told Vulture. “I recognize myself as existing on that spectrum: Not totally straight, but also not gay and not necessarily bisexual.”
Jillian Michaels
“Let’s just say I believe in healthy love. If I fall in love with a woman, that’s awesome,” Michaels told Ladies Home Journal. “If I fall in love with a man, that’s awesome. As long as you fall in love…it’s like organic food. I only eat healthy food, and I only want healthy love!”
Aaron Carter
Aaron Carter made an emotional statement on Twitter in 2017: “To start off, I would like to say that I love each and EVERY ONE of my fans. There’s something I’d like to say that I feel is important for myself and my identity that has been weighing on my chest for nearly half of my life.”
“This doesn’t bring me shame, just a weight and burden I have held onto for a long time that I would like lifted off of me,” he continued. “I grew up in this entertainment industry at a very young age and when I was around 13-years-old I started to find boys and girls attractive. There were years that went by that I thought about it, but it wasn’t until I was 17-years old, after a few relationships with girls, I had an experience with a male that I had an attraction to who I also worked with and grew up with.”
Daya
Daya made an Instagram announcement for National Coming Out Day in 2018: “one day late but happy 1st national coming out day to me! what a crazy thing! all i gotta say is follow your gut and don’t feel like you owe any sort of explanation to anyone. your sexuality is yours only so build with it at a pace that works for you. i’m proud to be part of the LGBTQ community with a girl i love who makes me feel more like me every day. the support has been beyond and though it wasn’t always easy i also recognize how privileged i am to have had so much of it, so i especially wanna be there for those of u who aren’t surrounded by the most accepting family/friends/communities. stay authentic, talk thru it with people u trust, know you’re loved and that i’m thinking of u. thats my long post of the month love yall be gay be free be wild n love lots.”
Demi Burnett
Demi Burnett made Bachelor history when she came out as queer, then brought her girlfriend on to Bachelor in Paradise: “Spoiler alert: I’m a queer queen,” she wrote on Twitter.
Julianne Hough
In August 2019, Hough opened up about her sexuality. Recounting a conversation she had with her husband, Brooks Laich, Hough said: “I [told him], ‘You know I’m not straight, right?’” she told Women’s Health. “And he was like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ I was like, ‘I’m not. But I choose to be with you.’”
Anna Paquin
Paquin came out as bisexual during a PSA for the Give a Damn campaign in 2010. “My sexuality is something I’m completely comfortable with and open about,” she told V magazine in 2011.
Miley Cyrus
The singer identifies as pansexual. “There are times in my life where I’ve had boyfriends or girlfriends,” Cyrus told Time magazine in May of 2015, adding, “I don’t want to label myself as anything. We love putting people in categories, but what I like sexually isn’t going to label me as a person.”
Raven Symoné
Symoné indicated in an interview with Oprah in 2014 that she is attracted to both men and women, and shared Cyrus’ opinion about labeling people. “I don’t want to be labeled gay,” Symoné said. “I want to be labeled a human who loves humans.”
Evan Rachel Wood
“I can’t say I’m one way or another because I’ve honestly fallen in love with a man and I’ve honestly fallen in love with a woman,” Wood told Marie Claire in 2011. “I don’t know how you label that, it’s just how it is.”
Megan Fox
“I have no question in my mind about being bisexual,” the actress told Esquire in 2009.
Mel B.
“I did have a four-year relationship with a woman,” the former Spice Girl said in a 2014 interview with The Guardian. “But I’ve been very happily married for seven years to a penis. An amazing guy.”
David Bowie
“It’s true, I am a bisexual. But I can’t deny that I’ve used that fact very well,” Bowie said in a 1976 interview with Playboy. “I suppose it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Brandi Glanville
“I love beautiful people,” the Real Housewives star said in an interview with HuffPost Live. “If you’re a man, you’re a man. If you’re a woman, you’re a woman. I’m not a lesbian and I’m not straight.”
Fergie
Fergie told Oprah in 2012 that although she hasn’t had a serious relationship with a woman, she has experimented sexually. “I mean, I guess I would call it bisexual or sexually open, free spirit … what have you,” she said.
Michelle Rodriguez
“I’ve gone both ways. I do as I please,” Rodriguez told Entertainment Weekly. “I am too fucking curious to sit here and not try when I can. Men are intriguing. So are chicks.”
Cynthia Nixon
“While I don’t often use the word, the technically precise term for my orientation is bisexual,” Nixon said to The Advocate in 2012. “I believe bisexuality is not a choice, it is a fact. What I have ‘chosen’ is to be in a gay relationship.”
Billie Joe Armstrong
“I think people are born bisexual, and it’s just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of, ‘Oh, I can’t,’” Armstrong said to The Advocate in 1995. “They say it’s taboo. It’s ingrained in our heads that it’s bad, when it’s not bad at all. It’s a very beautiful thing.”
Lady Gaga
“Well, I do like women,” Gaga said to Barbara Walters in 2009. “I’ve certainly had sexual relationships with women, yeah.”
Drew Barrymore
“Do I like women sexually? Yeah, I do. Totally. I have always considered myself bisexual,” Barrymore told Contact magazine in 2003.
Andy Dick
“I say, ‘I’m bi, my love knows no gender,’ and the straight community says, ‘Oh right, that’s just a cover-up — you’re gay!’ And the gay community says, ‘Yeah right, that’s just a cover-up — you’re gay,’” Dick said to Tyra Banks in 2009. “They both want to push me gay.”
Angelina Jolie
“I have loved women in the past and slept with them,” Jolie reportedly told OK. “I think if you love and want to pleasure a woman, particularly if you are a woman yourself, then certainly you know how to do things a certain way.”
Frank Ocean
The R&B singer shared the details of his romantic relationship with another man in a 2012 Tumblr post, but refuses to put a label on his sexuality.
Amber Heard
Heard came out as bisexual in 2010. “I didn’t want to look like I was hiding anything,” Heard told Elle magazine. “I’m not, and wasn’t ever, ashamed.”
Vanessa Carlton
“I’ve never said this before but, while we’re here and living out loud as we should every single day, I, myself, am a proud bisexual woman,” Carlton announced in January 2015, during a performance onstage at Nashville Pride.
Clive Davis
“Bisexuality is misunderstood; the adage is that you’re either straight or gay or lying, but that’s not my experience,” Davis wrote in his memoir, The Soundtrack of My Life. “To call me anything other than bisexual would be inaccurate.”
Kesha
“I don’t love just men. I love people,” the singer told Seventeen magazine in 2013. “It’s not about a gender. It’s just about the spirit that exudes from that other person you’re with.”
Maria Bello
“Whomever I love, however I love them, whether they sleep in my bed or not, or whether I do homework with them or share a child with them, love is love,” Bello wrote in a New York Times op-ed about coming out as bisexual to her young son.
Amber Rose
“I’m extremely open with my sexuality. I can be in love with a woman, I can be in love with a man,” Rose said to Complex magazine in 2009. “I’m not into bestiality, but as far as humans go, I definitely find beauty in everybody.”
Zoe Saldana
“If I wake up and I want to be with a woman, I’ll do that because it is my life, therefore it is my decision,” Saldana said to Allure magazine in 2013.
Thandie Newton
“We’re all potentially bisexual; it all depends on your circle, your upbringing, and all kinds of things,” Newton said to The Advocate in 2008. “Or maybe I’m just talking about myself. I could’ve easily fallen in love with a woman over a man.”
Megan Mullally
“I consider myself bisexual, and my philosophy is, everyone innately is,” Mullally said to The Advocate in 1999.
Kim Zolciak
“I’m among the millions of parents who have been in a gay or lesbian relationship. It hasn’t been an easy road lately, but I feel there are no mistakes in my life. Everything happens for a reason,” Zolciak revealed to Life & Style magazine in 2010.
Tatum O’Neal
“I’m not one or the other,” O’Neal told People of her sexuality in May of 2015. “I think women are the most amazing creatures on earth. They’re gentle, and also more intelligent than the men I’ve met recently. I don’t have a steady right now, but I look forward to it.”
Margaret Cho
On her journey with bisexuality: “[When] I was 18 or 19 … I thought I was a dyke. I thought I was a lesbian,” she told HuffPost. “And then I realized, ‘No, I’m actually attracted to men as well.’ So then it became something really confusing for me. My family had a gay bookstore, they were in the gay community, they were working in and around the gay community, so they really were aware of gay people and lesbians but they didn’t understand bisexuality. It’s still a sensitive issue for many people in my life. They really don’t get bisexuality. I’ve had this suspicion with every partner that I’ve ever had [that they didn’t get it]. I’ve never been with another bisexual person. I’ve only been with either straight or gay people, so, it’s a very suspicious place. Nobody has ever really accepted that I’m truly bisexual. Nobody has ever allowed it. It’s still very much a point of argument between anybody that I’ve been with. People just don’t accept it.”
Bella Thorne
“I’m actually a pansexual, and I didn’t know that,” Thorne said on Good Morning America. She clarified by saying this means “you like what you like.” Going on, Thorne said, “Doesn’t have to be a girl, or a guy, or … you know, a he, a she, a this, or that. It’s literally, you like personality, like, you just like a being.”
Willow Smith
“I love men and women equally, and so I would definitely want one man, one woman. I feel like I could be polyfidelitous with those two people,” Smith said on the Facebook web series Red Table Talk. “I’m not the kind of person that is constantly looking for new sexual experiences. I focus a lot on the emotional connection and I feel like if I were to find two people of different genders that I really connected with and we had a romantic and sexual connection, I don’t feel like I would feel the need to try to go find more.”
Nico Tortorella
“The more I’m having these conversations, the more comfortable I am identifying as bisexual,” Tortorella told New York magazine. “I’ve been so hesitant about using the word for so long, because it does have a negative connotation in our generation. People fought for so long for that ‘B’ in LGBT, and I refuse to be the person that’s going to throw that away because I think I have a more colorful word.”
Janelle Monae
Monae initially thought of herself as bisexual. “But then later I read about pansexuality and was like, ‘Oh, these are things that I identify with too.’ I’m open to learning more about who I am,” she told Rolling Stone.
Tessa Thompson
“I can take things for granted because of my family — it’s so free and you can be anything that you want to be,” Thompson told Porter magazine. “I’m attracted to men and also to women. If I bring a woman home, [or] a man, we don’t even have to have the discussion.”
Sarah Paulson
Paulson refuses to define her sexuality. “All I can say is, I’ve done both, and I don’t let either experience define me,” Paulson told PrideSource. “I don’t let having been with a man make me think I am heterosexual, or make me want to call myself that, because I know I have been attracted to women — and have lived with women. So, for me, I’m not looking to define myself, and I’m sorry if that is something that is seen as a rejection of or an unwillingness to embrace [my sexuality] in a public way, but it’s simply not. It’s simply what’s true for me, and that’s all I can speak to.”
Halsey
“I’m a young, bisexual woman, and I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to validate myself — to my friends, to my family, to myself — trying to prove that who I love and how I feel is not a phase; it’s not part of some confusion that’s going to change or could be manipulated,” the singer said in a GLAAD video.
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