Portia de Rossi

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Portia de Rossi (born Amanda Lee Rogers on January 31, 1973) is an Australian actress who is best known for playing Lindsay Bluth on FOX's hit comedy "Arrested Development".

She was born in Melbourne, Victoria and grew up in Grovedale, a suburb of Geelong. She took on her present name at the age of 15. An extremely gifted student, she left the lecture theatres of the Melbourne Law school to pursue an acting career.

Her first significant role was as a young, impressionable model in the 1994 film Sirens. She soon moved to Los Angeles and had guest roles on TV shows before landing a role in Scream 2.

She garnered international attention when she joined the main cast of Ally McBeal playing regular lawyer Nelle Porter in 1998. She remained with the show until its end in 2002.

In 2001 she starred in Who is Cletis Tout? with Christian Slater. From 2003 to 2006, de Rossi starred as Lindsay Bluth Fünke on Fox Television's critically acclaimed Arrested Development.

[edit] Personal life

De Rossi, who was once married for two years to documentary filmmaker Mel Metcalfe, is openly lesbian. From 2000 to 2004, de Rossi dated singer Francesca Gregorini, daughter of actress Barbara Bach and stepchild of Ringo Starr. During this period, she dodged media questions about her sexual orientation or the relationship and was rarely pictured with Gregorini in public.

In an interview years later with The Advocate, de Rossi said most of her family and Ally castmates learned she was gay through tabloid pictures of de Rossi and Gregorini in 2001. The couple broke up in late 2004 as de Rossi began dating comedian Ellen DeGeneres. In 2005, de Rossi officially came out and opened up about being gay in interviews with Details and The Advocate.