Hunger Games' Amandla Stenberg Comes Out As Gay In New Interview

Amandla Stenberg just made a huge announcement.

In an interview with Wonderland, the Hunger Games actress came out as gay. "Yep, I'm Gay," Stenberg told the magazine.

"I was so overcome with this profound sense of relief when I realised that I'm gay – not bi, not pan, but gay – with a romantic love for women. All of the things that felt so internally contrary to my truest self were rectified as I unravelled a long web of denial and self deprivation," she shared. "I was flooded with a sense of calm and peace because everything that I struggled with or felt discomfort around finally made sense to me, and once those floodgates opened and years of pent up pain and shame were released, I found the freedom to live my best life waiting for me just underneath."

Stenberg also revealed that her "first lesbian crush" was on Mila Kunis, who she'd seen in the movies After Sex (2007) and Black Swan (2010).

When asked what she loved about being gay, Stenberg stated, "I'm grateful for how being gay has afforded me this ability to experience and understand love and sex, and therefore life, in an expansive and infinite way." She continued, "The continual process of unlearning heteronormativity and internalised homophobia can be difficult, but one of the biggest blessings lies in the magic that comes from having to understand love outside the confines of learned heterosexual roles. It is the power to reveal the ethereal love that exists within us underneath socialisation."

Stenberg noted, "My sexuality is not a byproduct of my past experiences with men, who I have loved, but rather a part of myself I was born with and love deeply."

The Everything, Everything star posted photos from her Wonderland shoot on Instagram in which she wears a rainbow-colored wig and jacket. "OUT & PROUD," she wrote in the caption. "So happy to say the words Yep, I'm Gay in official print."

As noted by the Daily Mail, Stenberg had previously shared that she was bisexual in a series of Snapchat videos posted on Teen Vogue in 2016. "It's a really, really hard thing to be silenced and it's deeply bruising to fight against your identity and to mold yourselves into shapes that you just shouldn't be in," she said at the time. "As someone who identifies as a black bisexual woman, I've been through it and it hurts and it's awkward and it's uncomfortable."

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7r7XCpKCsr5mbwW%2BvzqZmampmZ4R5e8eupaCdomK0ornErGSapZGjsa2tjKyrnqaSmr%2BoecKopJ6rXaTCtXnArGSgmalitq95zZ6uZqGeqbKzwsiermg%3D