Top 30 Best LGBTQ+ Actresses

Sometimes I read comments on the internet, or I hear in real life that today it is a trend to belong to the LGBTQ+ community because several people are publicly open about their sexuality.

Let me tell you that this is not a trend, now people are free to express themselves openly, something that didn’t happen in the past.

The entertainment industry is one of the best examples of how decades ago, people had to hide what they were for fear of being discriminated against or even putting in danger their lives.

LGBTQ+ people always existed, and now we can openly express what we are. There is still discrimination and dangers lurking around, but society has become more tolerant thankfully.

Like the mantra that has been said in the past years, representation matters, and celebrities being open about their sexuality help people to find a voice and courage to open themselves.

Here is a list of 30 LGBTQ+ actresses leading the entertainment industry, who have been brave enough to open up about themselves.

Drew Barrymore

Drew Barrymore defines herself as bisexual. She belongs to the big Barrymore acting family, and she has been acting since she was a baby.

Her first major role was when she was only six years old in E.T. where she played Gertie. Currently, she’s on hiatus from acting, and she’s focused on hosting her syndicated talk show on CBS, The Drew Barrymore Show.

She has a long filmography both in films and TV, but if you ask me right now what movies I most remember from her, I would tell you:

Firestar (1984), Scream (1996), The Wedding Singer (1998), Ever After (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), Charlie’s Angels (2000), Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), and 50 First Dates (2004), which is my favourite.

Jodie Foster

Jodie Foster kept her sexual orientation secret for a long time. With a long career on her shoulders, having started acting when she was a pre-teen, and after being in a relationship with Cydney Bernard for fourteen years, she publicly acknowledged it in a speech at The Hollywood Reporter’s “Women in Entertainment” breakfast held in her honour in 2007.

Currently, she’s married to actress and photographer Alexandra Hedison. Foster’s filmography is rich and several of her roles have won prizes and accolades, including two Academy Awards for Best Actress in The Silence of the Lambs and The Accused.

Other popular movies starring Jodie Foster are Sommersby, Maverick, Nell, Contact, Anna and the King, and Flightplan to name just a few.

Stephanie Beatriz

This American actress, born in Argentina to a Colombian father and a Bolivian mother, moved to the US when she was two.

At the age of 12, she realized she was bisexual facing biphobia and bisexual erasure from her friends and family. She finally came out in 2016 and since then, she has been an advocate for bisexual rights.

She gained popularity for her character of Detective Rosa Diaz in the Fox/NBC comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and more recently for voicing Mirabel Madrigal in Disney’s Encanto.

Cara Delevingne

She is an English model, actress and singer, mostly known for her roles of Margo Roth Spiegelman in the romantic mystery film Paper Towns (2015), the Enchantress in the comic book film Suicide Squad (2016), as well as Laureline in Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017).

She’s openly bisexual and pansexual, and also she identifies as genderfluid. In 2017 she wrote a young adult novel, Mirror, Mirror, along with British writer Rowan Coleman, the story deals with LGBT themes.

Janelle Monáe

She’s beautiful, she’s talented, and she’s multi-faceted. Janelle Monáe is a singer, songwriter, rapper, science-fiction author and actress. What else can you ask for? And she also is openly bisexual and pansexual.

Also, recently, she came out as non-binary. Her debut in Hollywood was with two great movies: Moonlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Hidden Figures, where she played NASA mathematician and aerospace engineer Mary Jackson.

She has won several awards for her music. Her albums are concept albums with sci-fi topics, a genre she loves and writes about.

I discovered her when I saw Hidden Figures, and I instantly fell in love with her, not only for her beauty, but her talent, and character. Janelle Monáe is an icon of bisexual people who need representation.

Auliʻi Cravalho

This young and rising star born in Hawaii jumped into stardom with her first major role as Moana’s voice in the Disney musical film of the same name.

How Far I’ll Go, the main song from the movie became an instant success and Auli’i’s voice was everywhere. Recently she has starred in All Together Now, directed by Brett Haley for Netflix, and the Hulu romantic comedy Crush.

In 2020, she came out as bisexual with a preference for women, in a post she did on her TikTok account.

Megan Fox

Considered a sex symbol of this century, a label Megan Fox hates because of her insecure and shy character, we can’t deny her beauty is outstanding.

Actress and model, she is openly bisexual and has spoken about how the labels she got from men and the Hollywood industry have hurt her. She has been part of the Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises.

Anna Paquin

Anna Paquin was one of the youngest actresses to win an Academy Award. She was 11 years old when she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Flora McGrath in The Piano (1993).

Since then, she built a brilliant career both in films and TV. She portrayed Rogue in the X-MEN movies by Fox, and also she had the lead role in the vampire drama series True Blood.

In 2010, during the Give a Damn campaign, which was part of the True Colors Fund, an advocacy group organised by Cyndi Lauper dedicated to LGBT equality, Anna Paquin came out as bisexual.

Aubrey Plaza

This Parks and Recreation alumni is having an escalating career. She shared the cast with Dan Stevens in FX’s Legion, and she’s been in several films lately.

In an interview for the Advocate magazine, an American LGBT publication, when she was asked if women come for her, she replied: “Oh, yeah. I don’t mind. I know I have an androgynous thing going on, and there’s something masculine about my energy. Girls are into me – that’s no secret. Hey, I’m into them too. I fall in love with girls and guys. I can’t help it.”

Kristen Stewart

Kristen began her acting career at the early age of 12 when she portrayed Jodie Foster’s daughter in Panic Room. She has been part of major commercial successful Hollywood films like the Twilight saga where she played the main character Bella.

She’s currently more focused on working on independent films, which have made her filmography richer and given her several accolades. One of her latest roles has been Princess Diana in the film Spencer, for which Kristen Stewart was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

In 2017, she defined herself as bisexual stating that “You’re not confused if you’re bisexual. It’s not confusing at all. For me, it’s quite the opposite.”

Tessa Thompson

Tessa jumped into stardom for her role of Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok, which she reprised in Avengers Infinity War, Avengers Endgame, and Thor Love and Thunder.

However, she has been around for a while playing roles in TV series like Veronica Mars and Westworld. In 2018, she revealed she’s attracted both to men and women, but she doesn’t like to be labelled as bisexual.

Evan Rachel Wood

The Westworld star has been acting since the very young age of 9. She got a Golden Globe nomination for the portrayal of a troubled teenage girl in Thirteen. And since then, Evan Rachel Wood has been building a rich career both in films and TV.

In 2011, she went public about her bisexuality, and since then she has been very open talking about this. My favourite role of hers besides Dolores Abernathy in Westworld? Queen Iduna in Frozen II.

Portia de Rossi

She has played major roles in big TV series like Ally McBeal, Arrested Development, Scandal, and Nip/Tuck, but she’s widely known for being Ellen DeGeneres’ wife.

Portia is an Australian-American actress, and at the beginning of her career, she was closeted regarding her sexuality.

She was exposed in the media when she was caught in pictures with her then-girlfriend, Francesca Gregorini. After she started dating Ellen, she decided to go public with her sexuality and openly admitted being a lesbian.

Rebel Wilson

This Australian comedy actress not only surprised the world with her loss of weight, but this year, she also disclosed her new relationship with Ramona Agruma, a fashion and jewellery designer.

Wilson posted on her Instagram account: “I thought I was searching for a Disney Prince… but maybe what I needed all this time was a Disney Princess.”

The thing behind this is, that Wilson was kinda forced to come out because a columnist from the Sydney Morning Herald, Andrew Hornery, was going to expose her sexuality in his column. To regain power over her personal choices, Rebel decided to post it on Instagram to be ahead of the SMH publication.

A really sad situation, just like Eleanor Morgan pointed out in her article in The Guardian: “Nobody should be forced to come out as Rebel Wilson was, famous or not.”

Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen was a pioneer who dared to come out from the closet as a lesbian in the 90s during an episode of her sitcom. Although she made history, and the episode in question won an Emmy, she received backlash back then.

We’re talking about the 90s, a less gay-friendly time. Nowadays, she’s a celebrity who has starred in sitcoms, and movies, and hosted the talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which was on air for almost two decades.

She became an icon for the LGBT community, and she has been an activist for LGBT rights.

Kate McKinnon

Kate is mostly known for her participation during eleven seasons of Saturday Night Live between 2012 and 2022 as a cast member, being famous for her characters and celebrity impressions. She has always been open about being a lesbian.

Katherine Moennig

Besides being a lesbian in real life, she has portrayed Shane McCutcheon in The L Word and The L Word: Generation Q, who was a lesbian in the series.

She gained a lot of popularity thanks to this character, and she became an icon for the lesbian community.

Jamie Clayton

She’s an American actress and model trans woman known for her role as Nomi Marks in Netflix’s Sense8. She also played Tess Van De Berg in Showtime’s The L Word: Generation Q, and very soon we will see her portraying Pinhead in the 2022 Hellraiser film.

Laverne Cox

She gained popularity thanks to her character of Sophia Burset on Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first trans person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category.

Cox is an advocate for LGBT rights, and she has become a voice for the transgender community through all her work on making visible their issues and struggles.

Annie Wallace

This British actress is the first transgender person in portraying a transgender character in a British soap opera. The character? Sally St. Claire. The soap opera? Channel 4’s Hollyoaks.

She has been playing this role since 2015, and thanks to it, she has been nominated and won awards and accolades.

Ruby Rose

This Australian model came out as a lesbian when she was 12 years old, facing a lot of bullying. Currently, she also defines herself as gender fluid and gender neutral.

Ruby Rose gained fame for her role in Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black season 3, Stella Carlin. She participated in small roles in a bunch of action movies like XXX: Return of Xander Cage, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, and John Wick: Chapter 2.

Rose also co-starred in The Meg with Jason Statham. She got a leading role when she was cast for Batwoman, initially for a crossover in the Arrowverse, and then for a solo series.

Batwoman is a DC Comics character, who was reintroduced in 2006 as a Jewish lesbian. Ruby Rose suffered backlash for her casting because she wasn’t Jewish, and she wasn’t “lesbian enough” for being gender fluid.

In one word: the internet, you can’t ask for common sense.

Gillian Anderson

Gillian is a British-American actress who is widely known for her role as FBI Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files.

More recently, she has been impersonating other popular characters like Stella Gibson in BBC’s The Fall, sex therapist Jean Milburn in Netflix’s Sex Education, and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the fourth season of Netflix’s The Crown.

Although she has been defined as heterosexual in many interviews, she has also admitted to dating women in the past and being open to dating women in the future because according to her words “a relationship is about loving another human being; their gender is irrelevant.”

Raven-Symoné

Although Raven doesn’t like labels, and she prefers to not call herself gay but “a human who loves humans”, she came out as gay in 2013 when the legalization of same-sex marriage was taking place in several places around the US.

She also defines as a non-binary person. About her career, she has been acting since a very young age, but the role that defined her career was in Disney Channel’s That’s so Raven series that lasted for 100 episodes between 2003 and 2007.

Wanda Sykes

Considered a comedy icon, Wanda Sykes has a rich career as a stand-up comedian, actress, and writer. In 2008, she came out as a lesbian after marrying Alex Niedbalski, a French woman she met in 2006. Since then, she has been fighting for equal marriage.

Sarah Paulson

This American actress escapes labelling and prefers to address her sexuality as something fluid.

She dated only men up until 2004 when dated actress Cherry Jones, who is 18 years older than her, until 2009. She’s currently in a relationship with Holland Taylor, who is 32 years her senior.

Jameela Jamil

Jamil jumped to stardom thanks to CBS’ fantasy comedy The Good Place, where she played Tahani Al-Jamil sharing the leads alongside Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, and Manny Jacinto.

This British actress defined herself as queer after she was named a judge in the competing show Legendary. Why this? Because internet got angry because she wasn’t black and she wasn’t queer to be part of the show.

After her coming out, she received more backlash because she wasn’t “queer” enough, of course, according to people on the internet.

Demi Lovato

Lovato gained popularity for her role of Mitchie Torres in the musical television film Camp Rock (2008) and its sequel Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam (2010). The films served as vehicles to launch her musical career.

She defines her sexuality as fluid and admits she’s open to finding love with a person of any gender. She came out as pansexual and defines herself as non-binary.

Fiona Shaw

This Irish theatre and film actress is mostly known for her role of Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter movies, Marnie Stonebrook in the fourth season of the HBO series True Blood (2011), and Carolyn Martens in the BBC series Killing Eve (2018–22).

She defines herself as a lesbian, although she dated men before realizing her sexuality. Currently, she’s married to economist Sonali Deraniyagala.

Lily Tomlin

This actress, comedian, writer, singer, and producer, whose career began as a stand-up comedian, never formally came out of the closet.

She always was gay, but she preferred to keep her sexuality private. She married writer Jane Wagner in 2013 after being together as a couple for 42 years.

Holland Taylor

This American actress is popular thanks to her roles as Judge Roberta Kittleson on ABC’s The Practice (1998–2003) and Evelyn Harper on the CBS comedy Two and a Half Men (2003–15).

In 2015, during a radio interview, she revealed she was in a relationship with a younger woman, who happened to be Sarah Paulson.

Later, in an interview in 2020, she admitted she always has identified herself as gay.