Actress Reese Witherspoon had no idea what being gay meant before moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting.
Witherspoon said nobody in her family talked about homosexuality during her upbringing in Nashville, Tennessee in an article published Tuesday by Variety.
“No one spoke to me abut sexuality when I was a teenager,” Witherspoon said. “I didn’t understand what homosexuality was. My grandparents didn’t explain it; my parents didn’t explain it.”
“I had to learn [about it] from somebody I met on an audition in Los Angeles,” she added.
Witherspoon also said she incorporated some of the conversation she had with her grandmother about sexuality after moving to Los Angeles into her new show “Little Fires Everywhere.”
“She said: ‘Homosexuality is very rare, Reese. That’s not a thing that happens very often.’ And we put it in the script,” Witherspoon said. (RELATED: Reese Witherspoon Confirms ‘Legally Blonde 3’ Is Happening And Reveals Who Is Involved)
Witherspoon has talked about her upbringing in the South before during an appearance on Chelsea Handler’s show in 2006.
The “Legally Blonde” actress said she “really can’t stand” when people use the Bible to “promote intolerance and hate.”
“I grew up, obviously, in the South and there is amazing, wonderful connectivity and people are loving and communitive,” Witherspoon said. “But there is a tiny aspect of it, people [that] use parts of the Bible in order to express their intolerance and their hate and they manipulate it.”