Academy Award-winning actor Susan Sarandon — whose LGBTQ rights activism and appearance in a number of queer-coded films has earned her droves of LGBTQ fans — seemed to casually reveal she’s bisexual in a recent interview on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.”
In an episode that aired Wednesday, just a few days before the actor's new show, "Monarch," premiered on Fox, Sarandon and Fallon were having a conversation about her new cat, which she said she got after her dogs died. She told Fallon she couldn’t bring herself to get any more dogs, so one of her sons told her to get a cat.
“I’m bi, so…” she told Fallon, side-eyeing the audience and prompting laughs from the host.
“You mean you like dogs and cats,” Fallon interjected, to which Sarandon replied, “I’m fluid. I’m very fluid, where animals are concerned.”
The comment, which was part of a joke, set social media abuzz about the 75-year-old movie star’s sexual orientation, which has long been somewhat ambiguous.
In 2017, she told Michigan-based LGBTQ news outlet Pride Source that her sexual orientation is “open.”
“My sexual orientation is up for grabs, I guess you could say,” she said at the time.
In that interview, she said the majority of her friends have always been gay men and women. Explaining why she hasn’t had a “large dating career,” other than some long-lasting relationships with men, she described herself as a “serial monogamist.”
Then, last year, when asked during a podcast interview about her dating interests, Sarandon said she doesn’t care about the gender of her potential suitors, just that they must be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
“I don’t care if it’s a man or a woman. I mean, I’m open to all age, all color,” she told “Divorced Not Dead” host Caroline Stanbury. “For me, those things are just details.”
Regardless of her sexuality, Sarandon has long been considered a gay icon due to several of her queer-coded — and just plain queer — roles.
One of her earliest films was the 1975 cult musical classic “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which has been described as a milestone in queer cinema.
Sarandon then starred in the 1983 cult horror classic “The Hunger” opposite David Bowie and French movie star Catherine Deneuve. The film features an iconic lesbian sex scene between Sarandon and Deneuve.
In 1991, Sarandon starred in her arguably most famous, if not queerest, film, “Thelma & Louise.” In 2016, for the film’s 25th anniversary, the actor sat down with Harper’s Bazaar magazine alongside co-star Geena Davis to discuss the movie’s legacy. Sarandon was asked where she thought their characters would have ended up if they hadn’t famously driven off a cliff in the ending scene.
“Maybe Louise became a lesbian,” Sarandon said of her character. “That would be fabulous.”
Sarandon’s agent did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.