The Glee actor, who's hosting this year's 63rd Emmy awards, tells today's Observer that the courage displayed by celebrities before her in coming out helped her do the same:

"Sexual orientation doesn't mean anything out here in Hollywood. Ellen [DeGeneres] and Melissa Etheridge and Rosie O'Donnell – everybody before me who had the courage to stand up and say: 'America, you love me, but I'm also gay' – I love that they did that. It made it easy for me. But here I know tons of gay people, so when you get out there and you hear about people suffering at the hands of homophobia, it's shocking."

The actor also opens up about her former alcoholism: "One moment I was a drinker and the next I wasn't. It was almost like a fairy tapped me on the head. I poured my glass of wine down the sink and I haven't had one since."

Lynch's biggest achievement is not her acting career but her relationship and "hanging in there". 

On her spouse Lara Embry (pictured with her above), who she married last year in Massachusetts, she says: "My wife is smart as a whip. She's a psychologist and she knows how to ask questions to get to the deeper truth. She's very calm and patient, and I'm not. I think I taught her to have a great deal of anxiety."

The latest series of Glee returns on September 22 on Sky 1 HD.

Watch Jane Lynch and her wife, Lara Embry, talk about coming out below: