Maria Bello has come out as gay and has a girlfriend.
The “A History of Violence” actress wrote about telling her 12-year-old son Jackson that she was romantically involved with a woman he knew, Clare.
She revealed her sexuality in a piece entitled “Coming Out as a Modern Family,” in Friday’s New York Times.
The revelation was prompted by her son innocently asking her if there was something she wasn’t telling him, leading to his becoming curious about her love life.
“He was right; I was with someone romantically and I hadn’t told him. I had become involved with a woman who was my best friend, and, as it happens, a person who is like a godmother to my son,” wrote the “Coyote Ugly” star.
She reflected on the moment she realized her feelings for Clare, looking through photos and journals in her garden.
“I came across a black-and-white one of my best friend and me taken on New Year’s Eve,” wrote Bello, “We looked so happy, I couldn’t help but smile. I remembered how we had met two years before; she was sitting in a bar wearing a fedora and speaking in her Zimbabwean accent.”
However, it wasn’t love at first sight.
“We had an immediate connection but didn’t think of it as romantic or sexual. She was one of the most beautiful, charming, brilliant and funny people I had ever met, but it didn’t occur to me, until that soul-searching moment in my garden, that we could perhaps choose to love each other romantically,” the “Thank You for Smoking” actress wrote.
When she realized how she felt, she told Clare and they “began the long, painful, wonderful process of trying to figure out what our relationship was supposed to be.”
When she told her son, from her relationship with TV producer Dan McDermott, she was concerned at how he would react.
“He looked at me for what seemed like an eternity and then broke into a huge, warm smile. ‘Mom, love is love, whatever you are,’ he said with wisdom beyond his years,” she wrote.
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