Cara Delevingne is opening about about her sexuality for Pride Month.
The model and actress, 27, graces the cover of Variety‘s June magazine, and in the cover story opened up about being a queer woman in Hollywood.
“I always will remain, I think, pansexual,” she told the outlet. “However one defines themselves, whether it’s ‘they’ or ‘he’ or ‘she,’ I fall in love with the person — and that’s that. I’m attracted to the person.”
The Suicide Squad star added that she “never thought I needed to come out,” explaining, “It was just kind of like, ‘This is who I am. Just so you know.’”
However, Delevingne remembers growing up “in an old-fashioned, repressed English family,” and that there was a period of time where she “didn’t want to admit who I was.”
“I used the word ‘gay’ to describe things which were s— all the time: ‘That’s so f—ing gay of you, man,'” Delevigne told Variety. “Everyone used to talk about ‘Oh, my God, imagine going down on a woman.’ I’d be like, ‘That’s disgusting.’”
“I think that came from the fact that I just didn’t want to admit who I was,” she said. “I didn’t want to upset my family. I was deeply unhappy and depressed. When you don’t accept a part of yourself or love yourself, it’s like you’re not there, almost.”
“Once I could talk about my sexuality freely, I wasn’t hiding anything anymore,” the Paper Towns star said, recalling her fear of revealing that she was attracted to women to her father after one heartbreak.
“I was honestly terrified,” she said, adding she thought he might kick her out of the house. But she found acceptance. She explained, “He was like, ‘She isn’t worth the energy. You deserve to be loved.’ He was so sweet, I could cry about it right now.”
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Delevingne shared with Variety her definition of Pride, saying that it’s something she “never really had as a kid.”
“A sense of pride is like a sense of belonging, a family outside your family, a place where you don’t have to apologize or feel ashamed,” she said. “I guess I never felt like I belonged anywhere as a kid. Or I always felt like I didn’t belong in my own body. I felt so lost.”
In September, Delevingne told Elle UK that she’s “better” when she’s “in love” — whether that’s with another person or herself.
“I’m just better when I’m in love,” she told the outlet. “That doesn’t have to mean with someone. It can also mean with myself. It just feels incredible when you’re not alone, when you’re facing the world with someone else.”
Delevingne and her girlfriend of nearly two years, Pretty Little Liars star Ashley Benson, recently broke up.
“I’ve always felt bad for anyone I’ve ever been in a relationship with,” Delevingne told Variety. “It’s very hard to maintain the normality in it. I think it’s why I tend to keep my private life a lot more private now, because that public thing can actually ruin a lot of things.”
A source told 360APROKO in May, “Cara and Ashley always had their ups and down before but it’s over now. Their relationship just ran its course.”
