Loving out loud! Amandla Stenberg has been welcomed by the LGBT community with open arms since coming out as gay in June.
“I’ve been growing so much. I feel so loved and accepted and I feel like I’ve been embraced by a community really quickly and that love has made me feel really free and unafraid to explore my truth,” the 20-year-old exclusively told Us Weekly at the TrevorLIVE Gala 2018 at The Beverly Hilton hotel on Sunday, December 2. “I guess I would say I’m very lucky. I’ve never faced violence or harm for being who I am and I’ve always had the support of expressing myself as who I am.”
The Everything, Everything star also shared their advice for young people like them. “I can’t speak to everyone’s experiences, but for those who walk in some other shoes, I would say that being born gay or being born black or being born however … being born the ways in which you’re persecuted is such a gift and a present,” Stenberg told Us. “[It] gives you such a beautiful lens through which to look at life, because I’ve learned how to express love outside the confines that have been taught.”
Stenberg caught up with Us one day later at Equality Now’s fourth annual Make Equality Reality Gala, where they noted that being their authentic self has been “really liberating.” The Hate U Give actor added: “I am never interested in hiding parts of myself or feeling like I have to compromise them for certain constructs within my industry.”
The Hunger Games alum is happily dating singer King Princess (real name Mikaela Straus). Back in July, Stenberg told Wonderland magazine that the duo bonded while discussing “the systems that made us feel small and the effort we put in rejecting the institutions that reluctantly raised us.”
The couple were all smiles at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards in August while walking the red carpet and enjoying the show.
With Reporting by Taylor Ferber and Nicole Pajer
