Ellen DeGeneres (left, with wife Portia):
What a difference 20 years make? DeGeneres coming out in the 1990s was tumultuous ordeal that had seemed to derail a promising and skyrocketing career as a comedian and actor. She admitted spiraling into dangerous levels of depression in the 90s. But her personal torment was the currency that soon paid enormous dividends. A decade after being considered something less than bacteria, she was offered her own daytime talk show and even supplanted the Queen of Talk Shows, Oprah Winfrey, in the ratings before Oprah decided to end her 25-year run. If there is a celebrity gay role model who endured seismic quakes in her personal life in the fight to make homosexuals more acceptable in society, DeGeneres is the personification of that.
