S Club 7's Jon Lee: I'm Gay

Former S Club 7 singer turned actor Jon Lee has come out in an interview with the U.K.’s Gay Times.

“If someone had said, 'Are you gay?' I would have said yes, but no one ever did,” Lee said in the interview. “I’ve never felt the need to leap out of the closet singing and dancing about it. I’ve always known I was gay, from a very young age.”

In the late ’90s and early 2000s, S Club 7 was one of the biggest pop groups in the United Kingdom. Created by former Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller, the guy-girl group put out five albums in as many years and racked up a number of hits on the U.K. pop charts.

The group disbanded in 2003, and Lee went on to perform in stage productions in the U.K., including a leading role in Les Miserables. In recent years Lee has popped up in a number of independent films.

Lee, now 28, says he’s been out in his personal life since a very young age and never saw the need to come out publicly.

“If you are in the public eye I think people feel like they have a right to know, feel like they have a right to ask and that you should be completely open and honest about all these things,” he said. “And I think it depends.”

Read more of the interview here.