40 heroes

Ellen DeGeneres

Yep, she’s your #1 hero. Ten years after she outed herself -- and her sitcom character -- Ellen DeGeneres is on top of the world. She’s happily partnered. She’s wealthy. She’s hosted the Oscars. And five days a week, she shows millions of straight TV fans that being gay is no big deal. What other LGBT figure of the past 40 years has made a more spectacular mark on the world?

But that certainly isn’t the only reason Advocate readers voted her our biggest hero of the past 40 years. DeGeneres also exemplifies the classic hero’s journey of mythology -- a call to adventure, followed by a road of trials, and then a triumphant return to ordinary life. We love tales of people who take big risks, go through hard times, then brush themselves off and emerge better and brighter than ever. And that’s Ellen for you.

In 1997, at age 39, she just couldn’t breathe in the closet anymore, so she took a big gulp of fresh air and acknowledged what everyone already suspected: She likes girls. Television stars just didn’t admit such things then. As newly out T.R. Knight said when he was a guest on Ellen’s show a decade later, “It just made all the difference…. It meant so much.” She was a pioneer, and pioneers make things a little less scary for everyone following in their paths.

Ellen’s own path turned rocky after the brilliant “Puppy Episode,” in which her TV character Ellen Morgan came out. Before long Ellen was canceled, her relationship with mercurial Anne Heche ended in a blaze of weirdness, and her next sitcom, The Ellen Show, flopped. Ellen herself tells The Advocate that she went through a period of being “upset and torn and bitter,” feeling that she’d “lost everything.”

But like the mythical phoenix, she rose from the ashes. She earned kudos for tastefully hosting the Emmy Awards right after 9/11. Then a little movie called Finding Nemo reminded the world how gifted she really is. In 2003, when DeGeneres launched her talkfest—officially titled The Ellen DeGeneres Show but, like every other show she’s been involved with, known simply as Ellen -- an essential truth emerged: People didn’t want Ellen to be somebody else. They loved her. Nine Emmys later, they still do.

Some of us might complain that Ellen doesn’t play up gayness more on her talk show, but maybe we’re just impossible to please. After all, some of us complained that Ellen became too gay. Fact is, the Ellen of 2007 doesn’t hide who she is: She’s very open about her relationship with Portia de Rossi, she still dresses in dyke-next-door chic, and she represents for the community. “I think I represent honesty,” Ellen says, “and I’m proud to represent that.”

Ellen took the risk; Ellen took the heat. And now her daily unapologetic presence as a lesbian on TV normalizes gayness for Middle America -- a huge feat.

“I’m sure there were those who weren’t so famous who did a lot of great work,” she says of the gay heroes of the past 40 years. “So I really am touched. It’s a huge compliment.” -- Michele Kort