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"  You can be nice or you can be funny, but you cannot be both\u2014the comic mojo&amp;#039;s not supposed to work that way. Anyone who has ever seen Ellen DeGeneres&amp;#039; talk show or tuned in last year when she hosted the Oscars knows that she is indeed hilarious. I therefore brace myself for the worst as I make my way up into the sinuous reaches of the Hollywood Hills and hike up her driveway, which is lined with gorgeous yellow flowers. And there, at the door of her U-shape post-and-beam house, is Ellen, in a pale blue work shirt, long khaki shorts, and sneakers, wearing no discernible makeup. I smile gamely, and she grins broadly, welcoming me inside. The stunning wood, slate, and glass structure\u2014one of two houses DeGeneres shares with her girlfriend, actress Portia de Rossi\u2014is built around a nifty hexagonal swimming pool and adorned with folk-art sculptures and abstract drawings.  So, let&amp;#039;s see, Ellen is funny, has exquisite taste, and seems very happy\u2014plus, she&amp;#039;s nice. And, oh\u2014did I mention that she&amp;#039;s among the most successful people in Hollywood? That the ever-more-popular The Ellen DeGeneres Show has so far won 21 Emmy awards\u2014including the one for Outstanding Talk Show for four years running? That she is reportedly worth some $65 million? Ellen&amp;#039;s accomplishments are especially impressive considering that she works in a town where it helps hugely to be male, straight, and/or in rehab.  I linger at the house for close to two hours, and we talk about matters both weighty and trivial. Among the topics we cover: children (Ellen and Portia have decided not to have any because their lives are wonderful as is), human nature (Ellen believes everyone is basically good), and a dog bowl that must be returned because it&amp;#039;s the wrong height (if you have any say in your reincarnation, come back as Ellen&amp;#039;s pet, she advises). Ellen is, simply, a delightful presence. If I didn&amp;#039;t like her so much, I&amp;#039;d certainly hate her.  ELLE: When you first came to L.A., did you get any good advice?  ELLEN DEGENERES: Not one bit. Every\u00ADone said it was going to be so easy. I had the perfect look for sitcom, and I was going to get something right away, and I was going to have my own show, and none of that happened for a long, long time. Instead, I did stand-up for probably another 10 years and struggled. But it was all good.ELLE:  Yes\u2014look what happened to Lindsay Lohan. It&amp;#039;s hard to make it so fast and furious. ED: I think it&amp;#039;s harder than it ever was, and paparazzi are photographing every single thing you do. I&amp;#039;m sure a lot of people made mistakes\u2014they just were not documented the way they are now. ELLE: The universe was on time, as they say, for you and your career. ED:  Yes.  ELLE: You&amp;#039;ve won all these Emmys for your talk shows, and I keep thinking when I watch your show, God, she&amp;#039;s funny every day. Is there ever a day when you wake up and you&amp;#039;re like, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want to talk today&amp;quot;? ED: Sure. ELLE: How do you get through it? ED: It&amp;#039;s what comes naturally to me, so it&amp;#039;s like anybody who does anything for a living. Whatever it is, even if you&amp;#039;re not in the mood, you still can do it. Sometimes it turns out to be a great day because you&amp;#039;re just more laid-back. Even if I&amp;#039;m in a great mood and it&amp;#039;s my favorite day ever, and I have a bad guest, that&amp;#039;s kind of a struggle too. ELLE: What&amp;#039;s your favorite thing to shop for? For me, it&amp;#039;s shoes. ED: They just don&amp;#039;t make the kind of shoes I like\u2014they&amp;#039;re hard for me to find. When I stumble upon a pair, I buy every color. Carpe Diem are the ones I just got that I love. Usually I wear tennis shoes because my feet are flat, and it hurts to wear anything other than shoes that are cushiony. I end up looking tiny next to Portia because she wears heels all the time. So, for the record\u2014I&amp;#039;m taller! ELLE: Do you have a favorite designer or piece of clothing? ED: No. I like YSL a lot, but I also like Jil Sander, Dries Van Noten, and Comme des Gar\u00E7ons. But I have nothing special that I really love. ELLE: Does Portia borrow your clothes? ED: Sometimes she wears my stuff, and it&amp;#039;s cute. If I spend $1,500 on a cashmere sweater, it stays in until we&amp;#039;re going someplace; she throws on that sweater to cook dinner\u2014I love that about her. I was raised that you don&amp;#039;t use something nice until there&amp;#039;s someplace to go. I like that she puts on a cute outfit just to be around the house. She&amp;#039;s always coming out in a different outfit. ELLE:  Do you ever splurge on lingerie? ED:  I don&amp;#039;t buy the stuff\u2014it&amp;#039;s either my wardrobe person or Portia. I&amp;#039;ve bought lingerie for Portia, but I have no idea what it costs\u2014I don&amp;#039;t pay attention. ELLE: Let me ask you this\u2014boxers or briefs? Thongs or granny underwear? ED: Well, isn&amp;#039;t there an in-between? I don&amp;#039;t like granny, and Portia loves thong underwear, but that to me is so uncomfortable. I like thongs on people, but I don&amp;#039;t want to wear one! ELLE: You&amp;#039;ve hosted the Grammys and the Emmys and the Oscars. Which gig was your favorite and why? ED: I love music, so the Grammys is fun, and the Emmys\u2014when I hosted after 9/11, it was wonderful to be able to hit the right tone because it was such a delicate thing, and it was such a fine line to walk to make people feel good again, like it was okay that we were doing such a self-serving, selfish award show when something so tragic had happened. So I was proud of that. And with the Oscars, there&amp;#039;s so much pressure on you, and everybody says, &amp;quot;Why would you ever do that?&amp;quot; Because if you do well, it&amp;#039;s kind of like an &amp;quot;Oh, well.&amp;quot; And if you don&amp;#039;t, you&amp;#039;re slammed forever. So that was a big challenge for me, and I was really happy with how that turned out. ELLE: I loved you so much in EDtv and Finding Nemo. If you have a hiatus, are you going to make another movie? ED: My manager and my agent want me to, but whenever I have time off, I&amp;#039;m really happy to have time off. ELLE: It&amp;#039;s been 10 years since you came out. It&amp;#039;s hard to remember what a big deal that was. It seems like more and more people are comfortable being out. ED: Well, it is a big deal. We all know people in this business who are gay and are married or have girlfriends or boyfriends. If it wasn&amp;#039;t a big deal, we wouldn&amp;#039;t have that, and I think the more visibility\u2014and not even a sexual preference thing, just any kind of honesty\u2014the more we have representation, people won&amp;#039;t feel so bad. ELLE:  But now the girl from Welcome to the Dollhouse, Heather Matarazzo\u2014I love that she stepped up and said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a gay young female Hollywood actress.&amp;quot; ED: Yes, and I think a lot of people are completely fine with it. But Portia\u2014it was a big decision for her. We&amp;#039;d known each other for three years, and one of the reasons it took so long\u2014we talk about it now\u2014she&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;I thought to myself, There&amp;#039;s no way I could be with her because I wouldn&amp;#039;t have a career.&amp;quot; It was not an easy thing for someone who had a career to choose to be with me, when I was so public. ELLE: Right. ED: I give her a lot of credit for taking a chance and saying that she didn&amp;#039;t care what happened to her career. She cared about us being together. ELLE: It doesn&amp;#039;t matter what your sexuality is\u2014you are so lucky that someone loves you that much, right? We should all have that in our lives.  ED: Exactly, and that&amp;#039;s what you think parents would care about. I think a lot of parents say, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s just that they&amp;#039;re not going to be happy, or they&amp;#039;re not going to find love, or it&amp;#039;s going to be a hard road.&amp;quot; But the longer they feel that way and the longer it stays in the closet like that, then they are going to have a hard road. If they&amp;#039;re pretending to be someone they&amp;#039;re not, they&amp;#039;re definitely not going to find love\u2014because you&amp;#039;re not going to attract what&amp;#039;s supposed to come to you if you&amp;#039;re not putting out who you really are. ELLE: For all that we pride ourselves on being a country that is giving power to women, isn&amp;#039;t there still an undercurrent of resentment toward women who finally get into a powerful position? I just don&amp;#039;t see how you could say women are anywhere near on an equal footing with men, especially in Hollywood.  ED: I&amp;#039;m sure men have their own ways of trying to demean one another, but women can be very gossipy and judgmental, and that doesn&amp;#039;t help. People give me such a hard time because I don&amp;#039;t wear dresses. What&amp;#039;s that got to do with anything? I think there&amp;#039;s a whole bunch of things that go along with being a girl. You&amp;#039;re not supposed to have opinions or be tough or strong. You&amp;#039;re supposed to be soft and vulnerable, and I find those qualities important in both men and women. I think you can be strong and vulnerable. And you can be soft and tough. But for whatever reason, men and women say, &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s not soft enough. She&amp;#039;s not feminine enough,&amp;quot; and they find it off-putting and have to judge everybody. I think that&amp;#039;s just sort of where we are in the world. We&amp;#039;re very judgmental\u2014you have to think the way I do and look the way I do. For some reason, we can&amp;#039;t just enjoy somebody else&amp;#039;s success. Somehow that&amp;#039;s going to affect us. If they have more, then I have less\u2014and I don&amp;#039;t know why.  ELLE:  Is fame different for a woman than for a man?  ED: I think gender plays a part in most things, but I don&amp;#039;t know how it would be different because I&amp;#039;ve never been a man. And my fame is different from Nicole Kidman&amp;#039;s or Sharon Stone&amp;#039;s. I think everybody&amp;#039;s fame is different.  ELLE: If you could vote for any actor or actress in Hollywood to become president, who would it be?  ED: Sandra Bullock. She&amp;#039;s smart and funny, and I think she would be fair. She&amp;#039;s direct. Sandra would be a good president.  ELLE:  Didn&amp;#039;t you turn down the lead in Speed?  ED: No. That&amp;#039;s what everybody thinks. I would not have turned that down, but what people don&amp;#039;t know is that Miss Congeniality was written based on me. A writer saw me when I was hosting the Emmys for the first time, a long time ago, when I wore a dress, and I was on Primetime. They were filming me behind the scenes backstage, and a stylist, this gay man, was teaching me how to walk in a dress and heels, because you walk differently\u2014you have to put your feet in front of each other instead of sideways. The writer saw that and started writing Miss Congeniality, which I&amp;#039;m still furious about, because if he was writing it for me, why didn&amp;#039;t he offer it to me? They gave it to Sandra Bullock instead.  ELLE: Hilarious.  ED:  Yes, so she&amp;#039;s got a good career because of me.  ELLE: Were you ever offered a role that you wish you hadn&amp;#039;t turned down?  ED: The Opposite of Sex. ELLE:  Oh, I love that\u2014with Christina Ricci.  ED:  The writer/director offered me the part that Lisa Kudrow got. I thought it was brilliant, and I wanted to take it. But that was when I was with Anne [Heche], and Anne was adamantly against me doing it because, if you remember, Christina&amp;#039;s character was very antigay, and it was right after I came out, so that&amp;#039;s why it would have been brilliant for me to play that role. But Anne was adamant that I not do it. We argued over it. I thought it was brilliant, the movie was going to be great, and I&amp;#039;d never done a movie at that point, so it was a huge opportunity for me. I&amp;#039;d never been offered anything; I&amp;#039;d only auditioned. So anyway, I didn&amp;#039;t do it because Anne didn&amp;#039;t want me to do it. That was a bummer.  ELLE: Where do you keep all your Emmys?  ED: In my gym.  ELLE: Really? Do you use them for hand weights?  ED: No\u2014I could. They&amp;#039;re lined up on a whole row of cabinets. It&amp;#039;s crazy! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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