14 DAY TRIAL // After she landed a part in what was then the hottest series on television, “Ally McBeal,” Portia De Rossi became anorexic and bulimic. She talks about all that and how Ellen DeGeneres literally saved her life in her new book.
Portia and Ellen married in August 2008, and their story is one of how true love can, indeed, put an end to the biggest of evils, as Portia credits her wife with saving her life.
In her new book, “Unbearable Lightness, a Story of Loss and Gain,” Portia describes how obsessed she’d become with losing weight: so obsessed that she nearly killed herself in the process (quotes via the Daily Mail).
“I’d never known a day when my weight wasn’t the determining factor for my self esteem. The more effort I put into starving myself, the more satisfaction I would feel,” the 37-year-old actress reveals.
By the time she became a fixture on “Ally McBeal,” she’d already started to furiously lose weight whichever way she could, but mostly by not eating at all or eating and purging.
When she reached 82 pounds, she was surviving on more or less 150 calories a day (the recommended intake for women is of 1,700 – 2,000) and 20 laxatives, and was working out whenever she found the time.
Eventually, it all caught up with her and she collapsed on the set of “Who Is Cletis Tout?” in 2001. She was rushed to the hospital and was told her condition was worse than she thought.
Portia was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, organ failure, Osteoporosis and Lupus. She started eating again but went to the other extreme, gaining more than her previous body weight in less than a year, she recalls.
This is when Ellen came in the picture: she saved her life and not a day goes by without Portia recalling it. The two met that year at a Rock the Vote concert, and Portia knew from the start it was love.
“I remember being so excited and overjoyed to be around her that I can still recall the feeling of running after her back stage,” she writes in the book.
“Ellen has taught me not to care about other people’s opinions. Ellen saw a glimpse of my inner being from underneath the flesh and bone, reached in and pulled me out,” De Rossi also says.