Eilish O’Carroll has opened up about the difficult moment she told her two sons she was gay.
The Mrs Brown’s Boys star, who plays Winnie McGoogan in the sitcom, realised that she was a lesbian when she turned 40 after falling in love with a woman.
While she was immediately supported by her husband at the time, the actress struggled to tell her two children, Stuart and Lee.
Eilish admitted: “How do you tell your sons? ‘I want you to sit down now. Here’s a cup of tea, and by the way, your mother is a lesbian’.
“I couldn’t even get the words out and I hadn’t shared my feelings with anybody. The only person I spoke to was my husband.”
She continued to praise her ex-husband, and said: “He was very supportive, although he knew in his heart it was going to mean big changes for us as a couple.”
The mother-of-two opened up about this major change in her life, as well as her previous abusive marriage, in RTE’s The Keys to my Life – which will air tonight.
The programme, hosted by Brendan O’Connor, follows a series of celebrities as they visit their previous homes.
Recalling the time she realised she was in love with another woman, Eilish said: “I told myself I was insane initially, I was losing my marbles.
“I was coming up to my 40th birthday, which is a dangerous time for women, and I met a woman and fell in love with a woman. I didn’t plan to, and that would have major consequences on my family and my life.”
“But I discovered that I might just possibly be a lesbian or insane. So I went for the insane.”
She continued: “It was remarkable and I am always grateful for that.”
“And my feelings for her were undermining my feelings for him. If I could have both, I probably would have. But you can’t, so that’s when I ran away to Ireland to hide.”
After her realisation, Eilish admitted she left her family in the UK and bought a cottage in West Cork, which she visited during the episode to recount coming to terms with her sexuality.
She told host Brendan: “I kind of grew up here in West Cork, that’s when I became an adult. This is where I came out to myself.”
“I was hiding here and Âfeeling terribly guilty because of all I have left behind and the impact my decision had on my family.”
“But after a while the loneliness does outweigh all of those feelings, and outweighs any guilt you’re Âfeeling. I began to feel I needed to come out and join the world of gay people.”
