Norristown Native Maria Bello Comes Out in NYT Essay

Actress Maria Bello, a Norristown native, revealed in a New York Times essay published Friday that she's in a relationship with another woman. 

In the essay the actress described how she first told her 12-year-old son, Jackson, that she was in a lesbian relationship. The talk came about a year after Bello had embarked on a romantic relationship with her best friend, Clare Munn, a new media executive, the Huffington Post reports. 

"We had an immediate connection but didn’t think of it as romantic or sexual," the star wrote. "She was one of the most beautiful, charming, brilliant and funny people I had ever met, but it didn’t occur to me, until that soul-searching moment in my garden, that we could perhaps choose to love each other romantically."

Bello had previously been in relationships with one woman and a handful of men, including TV executive Dan McDermott, the father of her son, Us Weekly noted. 

When Bello decided to begin a journey with Clare, she was worried about how it would affect her work and her son, Huffington Post reports. But Jackson was fine with it. “Mom, love is love, whatever you are,” he told her.

Bello, 46, starred in the long-running TV series "ER," and in movies such as "A History of Violence" and "Grown Ups."

In May 2013, she hosted a fundraiser at Great American Pub in Conshohocken for her charity, We Advance. 

Bello was born in Norristown, graduated from Archboship Carroll High School and attended Villanova University. Her grandfather owned the Great American Pub when it was the Brown Derby.