Actress Jane Lynch says she knew she was gay at 12 but waited 19
years before coming out to her family.
Lynch, who is best know for playing coach Sue Sylvester on the Fox
musical-comedy Glee, made her remarks in an interview with
Marlo Thomas.
“I was about 12,” Lynch said on Thomas' web show. “And
someone was talking about boys walking down the beach together in
Florida holding hands, in some part of Florida.”
“And, 'They're gay,'” she said in a whisper with a hand cupped
to the side of her mouth.
Lynch said that she remembers thinking, “I'm the girl version of
that.”
“So that's when I put a name to it. But I knew that I was
attracted to like the cute moms in the neighborhood early on,” she
said with a laugh. “I always had a crush on somebody from first
grade on.”
Lynch described coming out as "hard."
“I didn't come out to my family until I was 31. If I had come
out when I was 18, I think it would have been a different story. I
think my parents would have had a really hard time.”
She added that her father voted for President Bill Clinton because
he's “for the gays.” (The video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)