Kristen Stewart reveals she was told to hide her relationships with women and chose to come out because she didn't want to live a 'partial life'

Kristen Stewart has revealed she was told to hide her relationships with women and chose to come out because she didn't want to live a 'partial life'.

The actress, 35, is married to screenwriter Dylan Meyer and has also been in relationships with the French singer Soko and model Stella Maxwell. 

In a 2017 interview, she described herself as bisexual, but that same year she called herself 'so gay, dude' while addressing Donald Trump in a Saturday Night Live monologue. 

During an interview with ABC News Live Prime Time With Linsey Davis, Kristen discussed why she chose to address her sexuality on the show.

She said: 'It was less about sharing the details of my relationship and more so acknowledging that there are people that don't get full access to being alive because they're hiding.'

Kristen told how people who she 'loved and trusted' advised her not to be so open about her relationships with women for the benefit of her career. 

She said: 'I've experienced perspectives [and] I've had conversations with people I've known, loved and trusted and still do, who thought, "Your career would go better if you didn't go outside holding your girlfriend's hand." 

'And I was like, "So you want me to live a partial life? And you want me to uphold, perpetuate and sustain a system that excludes people?" And I just can't do that.'

The Chronology Of Water director added that it was 'really obvious what's going down' when her romantic life received media coverage before she came out.

She said: 'I didn't want to be part of a comic book. But what I didn't want to do was hide from the world we live in. 

'I want to define it, I want to make it a more open and accepting place. And so I thought it was necessary for me to— I was already holding my girlfriend's hand in public.' 

She added: 'None of my relationships have felt guarded because I didn't want people to know me. I want people to know me. 

'I felt like they did, so I didn't really need to fill in the blanks. But at that point it felt like a statement that just might unlock other people's doors.'

Kristen began dating her now wife in 2019 and they married in April 2025. 

'I do. I really really really really really do,' captioned the Instagram post celebrating their wedding day. 

The actress recently made her directorial debut with The Chronology of Water, and shared that her decision was partly driven by the treatment of actresses in Hollywood.

'Actresses get treated like s***, I've got to tell you,' she explained to The Sunday Times in an interview on Sunday.

'People think anyone could be an actress, but the first time I sat down to talk about my movie as a director, I thought, "Wow, this is a different experience, they are talking to me like I'm somebody with a brain,"' she said.