Portia de Rossi on Marriage and The Closet

Portia de Rossi appeared on The View Friday to promote the return of her ABC sitcom Better Off Ted but spent the bulk of the segment talking about living life in the closet, same-sex marriage rights, and the fear of being outed when you're on a successful series.

De Rossi remembered the last time she was on The View, in 2003 ... just as talk turned to her personal life and she started to get nervous, a fire broke out in the building and the stage manager evacuated the stage.

"I, at the time, was very closeted and very, very afraid that one of you would ask me about my private life," she told the hosts. "Somebody asked me something about my private life, or we were kind of getting into that realm, and then, like divine intervention ... saved by the bell."

De Rossi says she came out officially when she started dating Ellen DeGeneres ("It's hard to be with Ellen and not let people know") but says it took her quite a while because "I was one of those actresses who was very afraid that my whole career would be over."

The actress shocked the hosts when she said marriage isn't a lot of work but rather "calming," prompting Joy Behar to joke, "I think I'm going to have to turn."

In the segment De Rossi went on to talk about California's anti-gay-marriage measure Proposition 8 and the importance of a gay couple's marriage being called marriage, saying, "The word actually does mean something because people will begin to see a gay coupling as a lesser thing in society."

Watch the segment here.