Actress Gillian Anderson felt compelled to open up about her previous romantic relationships with women after one of her lovers died last year.
The X-Files star revealed to the April issue of Out magazine she was involved in a lesbian love affair for "a long time" during her high school years and also confessed to same-sex flings.
Anderson now admits her big reveal was spurred on by her grief after learning a former partner had passed away in 2011.
She tells Britain's The Sunday Times Magazine, "I was talking to Out about gays and choice, and the view that you can just choose not to be gay in some way. I decided to talk about it now because someone with whom I was in a relationship a couple of decades ago - a woman - passed away about a year ago.
"I was talking about her and, in the context of the gentle conversation we were having, I thought I would say that I have had a couple of relationships with women, but that wasn't my experience because I did have a choice. I always knew I still liked boys.
"Being gay was never something that I identified with 100 per cent, because I knew that for me it wasn't the only way. I haven't spoken up about it before because there isn't the same fear and stigma now that there was. But she had just passed and I just wanted to speak about it in a matter-of-fact kind of way."
