Recently, Ellen DeGeneres revealed a dark family secret, hoping her unreserved admission will help others experiencing the same.
The comedian says she wishes she was protected as a vulnerable youngster and is “furious at people who don’t believe.”
Louisiana-born Ellen DeGeneres took the spotlight in the late 1970s, hurdling over the bumps that got in her way.
The talk show host got her big break in 1986 when she performed a stand-up routine on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, which led to more appearances on late-night shows, back-to-back club bookings and roles on TV series.
From 1989 to 1990, the funnywoman, now 66, landed her first regular small-screen gig as a cast member on the short-lived sitcom Open House and in 1994 she became the star of the comedy series These Friends of Mine, later renamed Ellen.
“I was laughing out loud when I read the script. I knew what I could do with it,” the popular awards show host told the New York Times in 1994. “I wanted a show that everybody talks about the next day.”
Conversation starter
Everybody did talk the next day, and every day after. In fact, the conversation was heightened when she came out as a lesbian on Ellen, and in real life.
The show was canceled in 1998 and though she was devastated to see it come to an end, she revealed the same year she was in a relationship with actor Anne Heche.
“I saw the most ravishing woman I had ever seen in my life standing across the room. Her name was Ellen DeGeneres. She was radiating,” Heche said of her first meeting with the comedian. “I think at certain times in people’s lives, you just radiate an energy and a glow of fabulousness. And that was her!”
The couple ended their relationship in 2000 and shortly after, Heche detailed some dark secrets in her past.
In a 2001 interview with Barbara Walters, Heche revealed she was sexually abused by her father, which started when she was only a toddler.
“He raped me,” said the award-winning actor who, in August 2022, died at 53 after a horrific car crash.
“I think it’s always hard for children to talk about abuse because it is only memory. I didn’t carry around a tape recorder…I didn’t chisel anything in stone,” the star of Wag the Dog said. “Anyone can look and say, ‘well, how do you know for sure?’ And that’s one of the most painful things about it. You don’t.”
Heche wasn’t the only one to experience trauma and the following doubt after her confession.
‘Furious at people’
“As a victim of sexual abuse, I am furious at people who don’t believe it and who say, ‘How do you not remember exactly what day it was?’” DeGeneres told Today’s Savannah Guthrie in 2018. “You don’t remember those things. What you remember is what happened to you, where you were and how you feel. That’s what you remember.”
