From Ally McBeal to Arrested Development, Portia de Rossi used to regularly grace our TV screens.
However, in recent years, she's retreated from the spotlight.
Here's a closer look at why you rarely see Portia de Rossi these days.
Portia de Rossi had a long journey to reach full self-acceptance. One of her first steps
on this path was the empowering act of giving herself her own distinctive name. Portia de
Rossi was born in Australia as Amanda Rogers. Although less memorable than her chosen moniker,
her birth name wasn't incompatible with fame, but the rebranding went much deeper than careerism.
De Rossi has commented that changing her name at 15 reflected her struggle
to reconcile her sexuality with an as-yet unaccepting world. As she told The Advocate,
"In retrospect, I think it was largely due to my struggle about being gay.
Everything just didn’t fit, and I was trying to find things I could identify myself with,
and it started with my name."
She picked her first name, Portia, from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice,
and chose de Rossi because it sounded exotic and sophisticated to her.
De Rossi started out in commercials before transitioning to a few small silver screen
roles. At that time, she was a young student at the University of Melbourne studying for a career
in law. Her first credit was in a low-budget Australian comedy called Sirens that came out in
1994. Though de Rossi's role was not a main one, the film received attention because it was one
of three films released that year that raised Hugh Grant's profile with American audiences.
In 1998, de Rossi landed the part of Nelle Porter in Ally McBeal.
This character was known as the "Ice Queen" while also serving as a form of comic relief,
an early example of de Rossi's talent for playing difficult personalities to humorous effect.
In order to both create her own identity and cement her career as a respected American
television actress, de Rossi had to demonstrate a colossal level of commitment.
One of the pivotal moments in her life was her marriage to filmmaker Mel Metcalfe in 1996.
By this time, de Rossi was a rising star, and wanted to stake a permanent claim in Hollywood.
To do that, she needed a green card. Her marriage served the
dual function of securing her future as well as veiling her struggle with her sexuality.
De Rossi says she couldn't go through with the green card scheme in the end,
but the fact that she considered the option is a testament to how important her career was to her,
at least back then. She took all kinds of transformative measures to solidify her
Hollywood reputation, even training herself out of her Australian accent while living in Los Angeles.
"And then, I'm going to be trailblazer of the year."
Portia de Rossi's career commitment had to weather some pretty heavy discouragement over the years,
as some of her career choices didn't go so well. Maybe the weight of her disappointments
eventually took their toll, and led to her disappearing from Hollywood altogether.
As we've seen in the case of Arrested Development, quality doesn't always equate to wide viewership.
The surreal satirical sitcom Better Off Ted starred de Rossi and began airing in 2009,
when Portia was fresh off a recurring role in the successful medical drama
Nip/Tuck. Sadly, Better Off Ted was canceled the next year,
despite praise from critics and a cult following that was unfortunately too small.
Of course, some of her ventures were clear missteps, such as Mister Sterling,
which only made it two months and 10 episodes before being canceled. De Rossi's attempts at
crossing over to film were mostly unsuccessful as well. She appeared in Australian production The
Night We Called It a Day, the poorly reviewed Wes Craven flick Cursed, and a few made-for-TV movies.
In addition to the aforementioned failures,
some of de Rossi's endeavors never had the chance to get off the ground.
One in particular that we would have loved to see had NBC not pulled the plug was a potential
Munsters reboot all the way back in 2012. From the looks of its pilot, it could've been a hit.
It also would have constituted a bit of a reboot for her career after producers decided Better Off
Ted was better off dead. Instead, the show's cancellation was both costly and conspicuous.
"That's so horrible and it's not true."
It's easy to imagine de Rossi as Lily Munster in Mockingbird Lane, the first episode of which aired
as a Halloween special in 2012. It had the option for a series pickup as well as a huge budget and
years of planning, but NBC declined, robbing us of yet another hilarious Portia de Rossi character.
Lily Munster is a literal vampire, but unlike the cold, dead personality for which the mythical
species is known, the elegant Lily is benevolent toward humans and deeply loving and caring
toward her family. If this high-profile spot had stuck, we might be seeing more of de Rossi today.
While many of de Rossi's projects are critically loved for their uniqueness and cleverness,
they don't always fare well enough with audiences to avoid cancellation.
Outside of Arrested Development, de Rossi's most recent appearance on television was in 2017.
She played another quintessential Portia character in a guest appearance on Netflix's Santa Clarita
Diet, when she portrayed a socially awkward doctor who spends so much time studying the dead
that she's forgotten how to interact with living people.
This critically acclaimed cult favorite began at 78% on Rotten Tomatoes and climbed 11 points each
season for a 100% rating in Season 3, which is when Netflix decided to cancel it. Though
de Rossi hadn't had a huge role at that time, critics called her the show's "secret weapon."
Unfortunately, this saga reads like so many of her ventures that deserved better. Her
roles are an acquired taste, perhaps because she presents us with traits we're supposed to hate,
then forces us to love her anyway.
De Rossi's roles represent her own unapologetic authenticity, and her
later successes attest to that. In Nip/Tuck, she played the mother of villain Eden Lord,
remaining loyal to her despite knowing what she's done. And on Scandal,
de Rossi was a strong, intelligent woman who did whatever it took to get what she wanted.
In addition to showcasing her versatility as a formidable comedic and dramatic actress,
these roles showcase her strength as a person. Despite a preference for privacy,
she has used her status as a celebrity to become a voice for many vulnerable populations.
She opened up about her struggle with an eating disorder in her book Unbearable Lightness:
A Story of Loss and Gain, and is also an active champion of animal rights.
As one of the first openly gay women in Hollywood, she lent courage to members of
the LGBTQ+ community. It was a challenging road to self-acceptance. For a long time, she refused to
publicly discuss her relationships or sexual orientation. She opened up about her private
life only after she began dating Ellen DeGeneres in 2004. De Rossi is very aware that while she
didn't choose to be gay, living her life as an openly gay woman was a choice she had to make.
While it appeared that de Rossi's decisions had taken her on an upward trajectory,
leaving her with a successful television career and a loving relationship,
something happened in 2017 that threw her career into question, when her
dynamic character on Scandal went out with a bang, killed in her office with a golf club.
Elizabeth North's death was a notoriously shocking one for the series.
When someone leaves a show in such dramatic fashion, fans are often inclined to wonder
whether there is something deeper going on. Was Hollywood done with Portia for good?
Part of the shock factor derived from the gruesomeness of the killing,
but most of it sprang from the fact that no one saw it coming. Many deaths in drama series come
as surprises, but de Rossi had just been elevated from recurring character to series regular
in the previous season. It seemed like things were looking up and that she was becoming an
indispensable character. De Rossi was only the second series regular to be killed off the show.
According to an interview she gave with showrunner Shonda Rhimes after her character was killed off,
it was de Rossi who made the decision to leave. The two have nothing but good things to say about
each other. Rhimes describes herself as a longtime fan of de Rossi's and wishes she could hang onto
her forever. Meanwhile, the actor revealed that she loved Scandal, but chose to leave because
she found a new career direction she was excited about, of which Rhimes was totally supportive.
And so de Rossi left Hollywood quietly. She's since revealed that it was her choice to retire
not just from Scandal, but from acting as a whole. She spoke more about this decision
on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, explaining that as she approached 45 years old, she began to
take stock of her life and what challenges she could take on that she hadn't before,
especially since she had a pretty good idea of what acting would continue to look like for her.
This quiet exit is on-brand for Portia de Rossi, who, despite her openness about some aspects of
her life, has a record of being pretty quiet in public commentary. In her interview with
Degeneres, the couple commented on de Rossi's aversion to press and talk shows. De Rossi has
said that her private life is hers and hers alone, but the media tries to get as close a look into
celebrity relationships and homes as they possibly can. As the actor explained on her wife's show,
"About the only thing you can control is how you respond publicly."
De Rossi has certainly exercised a great deal of control over her own public actions and reactions,
even when controversy erupts around her. For example, she was noticeably absent when
The New York Times sat down with the other major cast members of Arrested Development
to discuss the accusations of sexual misconduct and verbal abuse against Jeffrey Tambor.
She was also mostly silent when her spouse became the focus of a toxic workplace scandal in 2020.
DeGeneres has since described the quietly supportive de Rossi
as her "rock" during that time.
De Rossi's understated personality might be why you still see her in a bit of Arrested Development
Season 5. De Rossi once joked that creator Mitch Hurwitz essentially "ignored her" when she quit
and wrote her into the fifth season anyway. She and Hurwitz had a good, supportive conversation
when she quit, and then suddenly she was in five more episodes. But that's alright with her.
De Rossi explained that Arrested Development, the show she loves so much and whose cast she
has referred to as her "other family," is the only exception to her retirement from acting.
But the actress appears in only a handful of episodes in the fifth season,
and most of these appearances are pretty odd, to say the least. As fans quickly noticed,
her scenes are mostly green-screened in this season. Lindsay Bluth also develops the habit of
covering herself with a sheet, which means that de Rossi is largely hidden from view in a few scenes.
Basically, she's as distant from Hollywood as she can possibly be.
Portia de Rossi is still quite the celebrity, but she has now capitalized on her art appreciation
to start a high-end art printing business and online gallery called General Public.
Whereas her iconic character on Arrested Development had the habit of
pursuing new careers and pioneering obscure charitable events without much forethought,
de Rossi put a lot of thought and effort into her venture, even teaming up with Fujifilm to
create a new 3D technology that General Public uses to print its recreations.
She's also involved in a lot of philanthropy, especially animal-related,
from the Best Friends Animal Society to the Gentle Barn. She and her wife are responsible
for the Ellen DeGeneres Wildlife Fund, and the two traveled to Rwanda in 2019 to officially
break ground on the Ellen DeGeneres campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
"If you see a gorilla, just don't point at it."
It's safe to say de Rossi has stayed busy even as she takes her creative talents in a new direction.
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