Hollywood actress Lily Tomlin says she waited until after he mother died to come out as a lesbian.

Speaking to the Telegraph, she said:

My mother would have died. Literally. If she’d lived to see me come out. Bless her heart, she was Southern, basically fundamentalist, but she was very witty and sweet and kind and she adored Jane. She died 10 years ago. She was 91. So that was always kind of a dilemma for me.”

The Grace and Frankie star, who shot to fame as a comic in 1969 before later finding success with cult hit films like Nashville and 9 to 5, never had a grand ‘coming out’.

However, she has quietly spoken about her sexuality for a number of years – and married her long-term partner Jane Wagner on New Year’s Eve 2013.

The actress also said earlier in her career she turned down films that said “thoughtless things about women”.

They sent me two or three Neil Simon scripts over the years. When you’re first in the business you’re so innocent and free, the script would literally leap out of my hands into the trash can. Then afterward you get to know more and more people and you make more compromises.”

Tomlin is currently promoting her new film, Grandma, in which the 76-year-old plays a pot-smoking lesbian feminist poet – hurrah!

Grandma is released on December 11