page_title: Portia de Rossi
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Portia de Rossi / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Portia de Rossi and Ellen DeGeneres at a ceremony for DeGeneres to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
context_page_description: Portia Lee James DeGeneres, known professionally as Portia de Rossi, is an Australian-American businesswoman, philanthropist, and former model and actress. She is best known for starring as Nelle Porter on the American drama series Ally McBeal, for which she won a Screen Actors Guild Award, as Lindsay Bluth Fünke on the American television sitcom Arrested Development, and as Elizabeth North on the American political thriller series Scandal. She is currently founder and CEO of the art company General Public.
  She also portrayed Olivia Lord on the American television drama series Nip/Tuck and Veronica Palmer on the American television sitcom Better Off Ted. De Rossi is married to comedian, actress, and television host Ellen DeGeneres.
context_section_description: De Rossi was married to documentary film-maker Mel Metcalfe, from 1996 to 1999, initially part of a plan to get a green card, though she did not go through with the plan. She said about the marriage that "it just obviously wasn't right for me." In a 2010 interview on Good Morning America, she explained that as a young actress, she was fearful of being exposed as a lesbian.
  From 2001 to 2004, de Rossi dated director Francesca Gregorini, the daughter of Barbara Bach and the stepdaughter of Ringo Starr. She said that most of her family and Ally McBeal castmates did not know she was a lesbian until tabloid pictures of the couple were published. She declined to publicly discuss the relationship or her sexual orientation at the time.
  De Rossi and Gregorini broke up in late 2004 because de Rossi began dating DeGeneres, whom she met backstage at an awards show. In 2005, she opened up publicly about her sexual orientation in interviews with Details and The Advocate. She and DeGeneres became engaged when DeGeneres proposed in 2008. They were married at their Beverly Hills home on 16 August 2008, witnessed by their mothers and 17 other guests. On 6 August 2010, de Rossi filed a petition to legally change her name to Portia Lee James DeGeneres. The petition was granted on 23 September 2010. She became a United States citizen in September 2011.
  In 2010, de Rossi published her autobiography, titled Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain, within which she wrote about the turmoil that she had experienced in her life, including suffering from anorexia nervosa and bulimia and being misdiagnosed with lupus. She had struggled with the eating disorders for four years while filming Ally McBeal. To promote the book, she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
  DeGeneres and de Rossi both became vegans in 2008, though DeGeneres stated that she is no longer vegan.  They have adopted several rescue animals.
  In 2017, de Rossi tweeted that actor Steven Seagal exposed himself to her while she was auditioning for one of his films.
caption: De Rossi and her wife, Ellen DeGeneres, in September 2012
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