Ellen DeGeneres admits she hit 'rock bottom' when she was cruelly mocked for coming out

Back in 1997, popular TV personality Ellen DeGeneres bravely came out as a lesbian on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

The star consequently found herself and her sexuality becoming the butt of many jokes in popular culture, and the star has now opened up about the toll that the cruel mocking took on her personal life.

Speaking in the new issue of OUT magazine, the 58-year-old shared: “I was the punch line of lots of jokes. I laughed at some, but I realised there’s somebody on the other side of them. It’s cruel.

“I’ve never liked mean comedy, but that became even more important to me after I was the brunt of it.

“If this isn’t an example of ‘it gets better,’ I don’t know what is. Time is a strange thing. I was at rock bottom and out of money, with no work in sight, but one step at a time, it gets better.

“It gets much better than better.”

Ellen’s admission comes after she recently gushed about married life, with the TV host marrying beauty Portia de Rossi back in 2008, sharing: “There’s no best part [about being married]. It’s everything. I can’t imagine not being married.

“I have my best friend, the person I want to spend time with more than anybody else in the world.

“Portia and I constantly say to each other, ‘We are so lucky.’ Sometimes it’s lying in bed at night before I go to sleep, and I just say thank you to whatever, whoever is out there.

“Our priorities are each other too. If we had kids, then I’m sure they would be, but we are. And that’s important.”

We suppose Ellen was right when she said that in time things get “much better than better”…