Portia de Rossi picks love over fear after living her life `closeted and terrified'

Portia De Rossi as Beth with Robyn Butler as Caroline on the set of Now Add Honey, now shooting in Melbourne. Picture: Roadshow Source: Supplied

Sally Bennett, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Actor Portia de Rossi hopes her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres is a good example for young gay Australians.

The Victorian-raised-LA-based actor said she went from being a young woman who was "closeted and terrified of being outed as gay" to being happily in love with an American talk-show queen.

"I just fell in love with somebody and I thought I'm going to take this over living in fear of my television career ending," de Rossi said of coming out.

"I choose her, I choose to be happy and it was the best decision that I have ever made. We are actually good role models in that we're a very ordinary happy couple."

The Arrested Development star was speaking in Melbourne this week where she is filming Now Add Honey, a New Australian film from the makers of The Librarians and Upper Middle Bogan.

The Roadshow comedy also stars Robyn Butler, Hamish Blake, Lucy Durack, Lucy Fry, Erik Thomson and Angus Sampson.

De Rossi, who married DeGeneres in California in 2008, said marriage equality was "so important" and that she hopes in happens in Australia soon.

"It really does make a huge difference and it really does validate you, not only as a gay person in your relationship, but as a human being," she said.

"It's hard to explain the impact that just one person coming out can have on your life as a gay person if you're a teenager," she said.

"If you're watching the news and you know that the news anchor is gay, all of a sudden you think, maybe I could be a journalist, or maybe I could be a model, or an actress or a school teacher or a football player. It makes a huge difference."

De Rossi is flying solo for this three-week work trip and said she and DeGeneres were overwhelmed by the love and support they were shown during their March visit.

"It was crazy, it was great, but it was just surreal though," she said of the huge crowds that greeted them in Melbourne.

"It was like, this is my hometown, what is happening? And of course, I'd been telling her all this time, come to Australia and everyone will leave you alone.

"It was announced on her show (The Ellen DeGeneres Show) so I knew it was going to be a different thing, but I do actually think that if we came, just the two of us, that people would be respectful."

The release date for Now Add Honey is yet to be announced.

Australian actor Hugh Jackman tops the 'which-famous-person-would-you-invite-to-dinner' list

Hungry Hugh? Jackman has been chosen as the celebrity we'd most like to have dinner with. Picture: Getty Images Source: Getty Images

The Daily Telegraph reports

It is the question that pops up constantly (even if it's just in your imagination) - when planning a dinner party, who is the most fabulously famous person one could invite over?

And, as it turns out, Australians are after a mix of good looks, witty banter and talent, which explains why triple threat Hugh Jackman has topped a new survey endeavouring to find the nation's most loved and engaging star.

The list, called the Australian Celebrity Report and set to be released today, has been compiled by Southern Cross Austereo and Nine Rewards over two years.

While Nicole Kidman and - surprisingly - Delta Goodrem came close, Jackman says he was chuffed to claim the inaugural title.

"Just to be clear ... is this as a guest or the waiter?" Jackman joked.

"As an actor the idea of lots of great food thrills me to no end."

Kidman's hubby Keith Urban, actor Russell Crowe and model Miranda Kerr are also hot property at the dinner table according to the 40,000 Australians surveyed.

The report also featured a separate list of our favourite comedians, naming Hamish Blake, Adam Hills, Andy Lee and Rebel Wilson, as well as sporting stars, with Shane Warne, Eddie McGuire, Mark Webber and Ricky Ponting making the cut.

Australia's Top 10 dinner party guests:

1. Hugh Jackman 2. Nicole Kidman 3. Delta Goodrem 4. Kylie Minogue 5. Miranda Kerr 6. Russell Crowe 7. Hamish Blake 8. Keith Urban 9. Jennifer Hawkins 10. Adam Hills

Bret McKenzie battered and bruised on Two Little Boys

Fighting fit: Bret McKenzie as Nige in Two Little Boys Source: National Features

Vicky Roach, The Daily Telegraph, reports

Bret McKenzie took a serious hiding on his latest film, a twisted bromance set in New Zealand's deep south in the 1990s.

But it wasn't from the critics.

Off screen, the Flight Of the Conchords star got along well with new comedy bestie Hamish Blake.

But on screen, they beat each other black and blue.

"Hamish and I were so inexperienced that we didn't know how to do fake fighting," McKenzie says.

"So (director) Rob (Sarkies) just told us to punch each other to make it real.

"We ended up so bruised and beaten - particularly me, because Hamish is a bit bigger than me - that they had to put make-up over the bruises when they were filming."

McKenzie plays "another hapless fool, but an extreme version this time" in Sarkies's black comedy, which explores the dysfunctional relationship between two childhood friends growing up in Invercargill, New Zealand's southern-most "city".

When Two Little Boys opens, Nige (McKenzie) has managed to extricate himself from the clutches of a deeply possessive Deano (Blake) by moving in with his new friend Gav (Maaka Pohatu), a giant teddy bear of a man.

But after the mullet-sporting pushover accidentally runs over a Norwegian backpacker - after spilling a hot meat pie on his stone-washed jeans - he is sucked back into Deano's suffocating orbit.

For the professionally affable Blake, it was a welcome chance to play against type.

"It's great isn't it?" says McKenzie. "I love that. His character is so different from what people are going to expect from him."

Although they joked they felt like they were cheating on their long-time comedy partners - Jemaine Clement and Andy Lee - they quickly adjusted to the infidelity.

"That was probably one of the best things about the film," McKenzie says. "Even though it's a comedy, some scenes were quite bleak to shoot.

"It was great having Hamish to bounce off, because he is such an incredibly funny man."

McKenzie has his chance to play against type in his next project, the romantic comedy Austenland, in which he stars opposite Felicity's Keri Russell as a confident ladies' man.

There's been no bullying, either, on his latest project - even though he's back working with Miss Piggy.

Miss Piggy and Kermit and the gang have retired to a backlot while McKenzie and director James Bobin work on a follow up to The Muppets.

Despite the best original song Oscar McKenzie won for Man or Muppet, Two Little Boys' Kiwi black comedic tone is in some ways closer to his heart.

"It's definitely the stuff I find funny as well," he says.

"Working in Los Angeles, I have learned to tone it down. I just know that there are some things I find funny that will not make it through the system."

McKenzie expects the new Muppets movie to keep him gainfully occupied for most of next year. This will come as a disappointment to Flight Of the Conchords fans, since that means that that long-anticipated movie probably won't get off the ground.

"I'm not sure if that is going to happen," he says. "We like the idea but it's no more than an idea. We are busy doing other things and films take such a long time to make. I find it hard to imagine us finding two years to work on a film."

Love is on the air as Adam Hills hosts a big fat gay wedding

Gay couples tie the knot on the ABC’s Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight. Photo: Joe Armao

Karl Quinn, The Sydney Morning Herald, reports

The brides wore white. Barry Morgan pumped his organ (Hammond, that is). Adam Ant and his band played Prince Charming in place of the bridal waltz. And 41 same-sex couples had a ball as Adam Hills' big fat gay wedding went off without a hitch last night - literally, since none of it is legally binding.

The ABC will broadcast its first foray into the arranged marriage business tomorrow night, and whatever the viewer response it's safe to say it was a hit in Elsternwick with the famous but slightly shabby Melbourne studio taking on a touch of fairytale romance as Adam Hills in Gordon Street Tonight played host to what was billed as Australian television's first mass gay wedding.

"Our thought was we can't give you what you really want - a legal marriage - and a civil ceremony isn't ideal, so let's just do something ridiculous. Lets give you a TV wedding," said Hills from his make-up chair just before the nuptials began. "And we haven't had a big TV wedding for a while."

It's unlikely anything Rafters can conjure this season will be able to top last night's effort for sheer joyous spectacle.

The evening kicked off with the usual round of amiable chat between Hills and his guests - Vue du Monde chef Shannon Bennett, all-round nice guy Hamish Blake, and actress Noni Hazlehurst - before the entire audience upped stumps and relocated to a second studio, decked out as a wedding chapel. There was billowing white fabric and flowers everywhere; at the back of the room there was even a stage for the evening's wedding singer, Adam Ant, to perform on.

As TV stunts go, it was elaborate. The idea for the event was in fact conceived out of wedlock, a couple of weeks before the first show of the season went to air. Prospective audience members are asked to complete a questionnaire, and when they started pouring in for the first show a pattern began to emerge. Asked "what would you change if you were Prime Minister for a day?" an overwhelming majority answered they'd legalise same-sex marriage.

"And when I read one saying, 'I'd change the same sex laws so I could marry my girlfriend', I thought, 'I think I know what I have to do now'," Hills said last night.

The show's producers contacted Rebecca Edwards to ask how she would feel about being "married" - albeit without any legal status - on TV. She said was up for it. But even Hills was surprised by how up for it she was.

"I didn't expect her to pull out a ring and get down on one knee," he said. "That's when I realised this wasn't just a fun thing, there's some meaning behind it."

So much meaning for so many people, in fact, that the day after her proposal went to air 200 other couples contacted the ABC to say they wanted to be involved. In the end, logistics limited the wedding party to 41 couples.

The two women who started it all were unfazed about having their most intimate faux-ment broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people.

"None of us is in this to rattle cages," said Elyse James, 28. "We're all just here to show there's nothing wrong with this, the world won't collapse, there's no fire and brimstone, everything's going to carry on as normal except that a whole group of people who are unequal in society will be able to marry the people they love."

"I'm sort of treating myself as a bit of a pink prop for all this," said 37-year-old Rebecca Edwards. "I stand where the director says, I say what I'm told and then I'm out of it."

Yes, they were off on a honeymoon of sorts - a two-night cruise from Newcastle to Brisbane - but that was booked long before the wedding came into the picture, Edwards said. This occasion was more about a political cause than their personal desires.

"Our personal wedding, that will be our day," she added. "I've got it all planned, but I can't say too much in front of Elyse."

Do you have a date in mind?

"Hopefully when the law is changed."

The wedding will screen on ABC1 at 8.30pm Wednesday