Tag Archives: Maria Bello

Maria Bello is an internationally renowned actor, activist, and author. She has won numerous awards for her acting and in 2009 she was voted one of Variety Magazine’s most powerful women in Hollywood for her activism. She has recently written in book titled “Whatever Love is Love” which was inspired by her essay, “Coming Out as a Modern Family”. The article was about how to tell her son that she had fallen in love with a woman. The column started a worldwide conversation about how many of the labels we all know and use are simply out dated today. Partnership, career, love, sexuality, all of these aspects of life are fluid now. We no longer fit into the tidy little boxes, and neither do our lives. Questioning those labels is at the heart of Whatever…Love is Love.

Maria Bello Questions the Labels We Give Ourselves

In November 2013, Bello wrote a column for the “Modern Love” section of The New York Times called “Coming Out as a Modern Family” about her family. For Bello, her “modern family” consists of her beloved son, a close friendship with her ex-husband and a romantic pairing with her long-time friend Claire Munn, whom Maria only realised she was in love with when she was 45 years old.

Maria Bello 07

The column received thousands of comments, which prompted her to write a book called Whatever…Love is Love: Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves.

The book allows Bello to explore various aspects of her life. For example, each chapter starts with a question like “Am I a Catholic?” and “Am I LGBT or W?” – The “W” stands for “whatever”. It’s also a book about loving yourself and honouring the real relationships in your life, whether or not they fit the model of what family, friends or lovers are “supposed” to look like. Rejecting that nasty compulsory white-cis-heterosexism that tries to trap women – just find a man, and you’ll be OK.

I raised questions about the meaning of partnership, modern family, and the labels we all carry. I wrote about the people standing by my bedside when I was sick at the time.

They were all my partners in some way, whether I slept in the same bed with them, did homework with them or had a child with them. When I told my son that I had fallen in love with a woman [Clare Munn] who was like a godmother to him, he simply said to me, ‘Whatever, Mom…Love is love’. That statement opened up a door to a larger conversation about how many of the labels we use today are outdated.”

Maria Bello 06

In a recent interview with on GLAAD: All Access, hosted Claire Pires, actress Maria Bello opened up about her new book. Watch the interview here:

 

Watch the Trailer for Stephen King’s ‘Big Driver’ Teaser Starring Maria Bello

This fall, Lifetime will premiere their adaptation of the Stephen King novel Big Driver. Maria Bello will star in the original TV movie, which will be based on the novella from King’s 2010 collection Full Dark, No Stars, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

In Big Driver, Bello plays Tess Thorne, a famous and revered mystery writer who faces a long drive home following a book signing engagement. Prompted to take a shortcut at the suggestion of the event’s planner, Ramona, Tess sets out to return to her house. But while driving on a lonely stretch of New England road, her tire blows out, leaving her stranded.

Relieved when another driver stops and offers assistance, Tess quickly discovers that her saviour is actually her assailant, a serial killer who repeatedly assaults her. Left for dead in a drainage pipe to rot with the bodies of his other victims, Tess escapes and makes her way safely home. With her fragile mind beginning to unravel, she is determined to find her rapist and seek revenge, as payback is the only thing holding her together.

Maria plays Tess Thorne, a mystery writer who drives to a convention in Massachusetts and is warned by a librarian to avoid the highway home. When Tess takes the alternate route as suggested, her tire blows out and she meets a trucker who she thinks will help her out. Instead, he brutalizes her sexually and physically, leaving her for dead. Tess survives, though, and decides that instead of going to the authorities, she’ll seek revenge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAlEZ7Xw1kI

Olympia Dukakis, Joan Jett and Will Harris also star in the revenge tale adaptation. Big Driver marks the first collaboration between King and the A+E Networks-owned female-skewing cable network.

Best-selling author King has had many of his fictional works — more than 50 novels and hundreds of shorts — adapted for film and television, including The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Shining, Stand by Me, Firestarter, and Under the Dome, which was ordered straight to series in 2013 at CBS. He has also penned The Stand and Dark Tower comic book series.

For Lifetime Big Driver is the latest original movie in recent weeks, as it has already lined up the behind-the-scenes Saved by the Bell movie and biopics centered on the late Whitney Houston, directed by Angela Bassett, and Aaliyah, to be played by Zendaya.

Showbiz’s Late Lesbians

It takes some lesbians a little bit of time to figure out that they are lesbians. Their suspicions might start with a few “signs” at school – they don’t fancy boys and/or they might feel attracted to a best female mate. Intolerant friends and family might dissuade them from expressing their true sexual identity at that age, but when they get older they realise they are free to be who they want to be.

Here are four famous showbiz women who took a bit of time to realise that they were queer.

Kelly McGillis, actress

She was one of the iconic faces of American cinema in the 1980s, her credits including Top Gun, Witness and The Accused. After a failed marriage in the early ’80s, McGillis settled down with a girlfriend, despite wrestling with guilt that her lesbian persuasion was somehow morally wrong. Things went terribly wrong in 1982 when two men burst into her house and sexually assaulted her and her girlfriend. Her reaction was to descend into drink and drugs, but she did emerge out the other end when she started making regular appearances on the lesbian TV show The L Word in 2007. Since 2010 she has been happily married to music company exec Melanie Leis.

Wanda Sykes, comedienne

Wanda Sykes admits to having queer urges in her childhood, but felt socially pressured to repress them. She did eventually come out at the age of 40 after a seven year marriage to the record producer Dave Hall, with whom she has two kids.

Maria Bello, activist and actress

Maria’s “modern family” consists of her beloved son, a close friendship with her ex-husband and a romantic pairing with her long-time friend Claire Munn, whom Maria only realised she was in love with when she was 45 years old!

Carol Leifer, writer and comedienne

Here’s another celebrity who didn’t realise she was a supporter of Sappho until early middle age. After dating such high profile gents as Jerry Seinfeld, Carol Leifer fell in love with her now-partner Lori Wolf when they were both in their early 40s.