Despite being an advocate for the LGBTQ community, Chris Martin admitted when he was a teen and first learning about his own sexuality he was “very homophobic.”
“When I went to boarding school I walked a bit funny and I bounced a bit and I was also very homophobic because I was like, ‘If I’m gay, I’m completely f–ked for eternity’ and I was a kid discovering sexuality,” he told Rolling Stone’s editorial director Jann S. Wenner in a rare new interview.
The Coldplay frontman, 42, explained that the “hardcore” kids at his school in England would tease him.
“They were very much like, ‘You’re definitely gay,’ in quite a full-on manner, quite aggressively telling me that and it was weird for me for a few years,” he said.
Martin, who shares two children with ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow, said that, at the time, he didn’t know if he was gay or not but thought to himself, “Even if I am, I can’t be because it’s wrong.” He added that it created “a terrible turmoil” for him.
“About 15 and a half, I don’t know what happened, I was like, ‘Yeah so what?’ and then it all just stopped overnight. It was very interesting. Once I was like, ‘Yeah, so what if I’m gay?'” he said of not caring about people’s assumptions any longer.
He continued, “Just growing up a bit and having a bit more exposure to the world thinking, ‘A lot of my heroes are gay’ or whatever. Whatever they are, it doesn’t really matter.”
He is currently dating the actress Dakota Johnson.