Former Disney star Bella Thorne announced that she’s pansexual in a recent interview, saying she didn’t identify as such until someone explained the sexual orientation to her.
The former Shake it Up! actress, who is promoting her new book, The Life of a Wannabe Mogul: Mental Disarray, confirmed her new sexual orientation during an interview with Good Morning America on Monday, explaining that pansexuals “just like a being.”
“I’m actually pansexual and I didn’t know that,” Bella Thorne said. “You like beings. You like what you like. Doesn’t have to be a girl or a guy or a he or she or they or this or that.”
“Literally, you like personality,” she added. “You just like a being.”
However, the actress confirmed her status as a bisexual on Twitter in response to a fan in 2016:
Bisexuality describes an individual who is attracted to both men and women, while pansexuality broadens the scope, including individuals who identify as something other than the two established biological sexes.
“I like sexy girls, I like sexy guys,” Bella Thorne added. “I like sexy in general, you know?”
The Famous In Love actress recently made waves after claiming that she was “molested” and “physically abused” as a child actress in the entertainment industry. While speaking about her transition from a child Disney star to an adult in Hollywood in an interview with BUILD, she said: “Getting molested, for fucking, from when you’re six to your 14, seems like way harder circumstances.”
“You’re being physically abused all the time. Seems like a much more difficult situation than fucking having paparazzi following you since you were 12,” she continued.
The actress said it was difficult to have paparazzi constantly follow her, all while she was being physically abused. She said those around her did “nothing” about it.
“I was still being molested when paparazzi were still fucking following me,” she continued. “So it’s pretty hard in my mind to think of these big flashlight photographs, and everyone thinking they know me and talking about me, but having no idea the type of mistreatment that I was still dealing with at that time — that everyone around me saw and did nothing.”
Thorne is not the first celebrity to take on an unusual sexual orientation. Pop superstar Miley Cyrus, who told her parents she identified as a bisexual at the age of 14, came out as a pansexual in 2015.