Baby Reindeer actress Jessica Gunning has revealed in a candid new interview that she was a virgin up until the age of 36 – choosing to remain celibate as she avoided examining her sexuality.
The 40-year-old Netflix star made the admission in a new interview with Sunday Times Magazine, revealing that until the age of 36 she had not been in a relationship “with anyone” and had instead focused on her work as an actor for much of her adult life.

“The characters I got to play, I felt like I maybe lived vicariously through a lot of them,” she told the outlet.

“I felt very sexual, and I felt very connected to myself, so I was so happy in so many ways.

“It didn’t feel like I was lonely. I lived with my best mate. I felt fulfilled. So I didn’t feel like I was lacking anything.”

Gunning said that she thought her decision to remain celibate may have also been connected to her body size.

“Maybe because I was bigger, I’ve always felt like — it’s hard to word this because I don’t want it to seem like I’m saying it in a negative way, because it definitely isn’t, I didn’t feel like an alien in a negative way — but it was like an otherness,’ she said.

“And the otherness, I suppose, looking back, protects me from having to go, ‘I don’t fancy men’. So I was just, like, ‘Oh, it’s not the time for me,’ or whatever. And then, before I knew it, I was in my thirties.”

She told the outlet that since coming out as gay in 2022 aged 36, she’s had two girlfriends, but still finds her career takes up much of her focus. Gunning came out more publicly in 2024, following the huge success of the Netflix series Baby Reindeer, which saw her play an obsessed stalker.

“I came out actually in November 2022 and that was a mega, mega thing for me,” she said on the Reign with Josh Smith podcast.

“I’m surrounded by gays, all my friends are gay and so it wasn’t that I was repressing anything. It was just that I didn’t think I could be, and I still can’t articulate it in the best way,” she continued.

“But yeah, I realised I was a big old gay, and I was like, ‘That’s what it’s been. That’s what it is.’”

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