For decades lesbian actresses pretended to be straight, had ‘lavender marriages’ and lied to the world about their sexual liaisons. Any lesbian connotation was the kiss of death in Hollywood and many lesbian actresses went back into the closet. Even trailblazers such as Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo never confirmed their affairs with other women.

Today, female bisexuality and homosexuality are gradually becoming more acceptable in the film world thanks to stars like Ellen DeGeneres, who came out publicly in 1997 and started a relationship with actress Anne Heche. However, bisexuality seems easier to accept and Drew Barrymore and Angelina Jolie being open about their fancy for girls has only furthered their appeal.

In Notes on a Scandal Dame Judi Dench plays a poker-faced lesbian obsessed with beautiful Cate Blanchett. Her looks and wooing technique leave a lot to be desired and it’s unlikely that our top ten lesbian actresses, listed below, needed to blackmail and stalk the object of their affections - even if some of them didn’t admit to their desires in public!

Marlene Dietrich
‘Falling in Love Again’ epitomises Marlene Dietrich’s dangerously sexy femme fatale persona. Her mystique has endured decades and her cool, cross-dressing style has been admired by gays and lesbians the world over.

She was introduced to acting in 1924 when she married film director Rudolf Sieber and moved to America when the Nazis gained control of her native Germany. Although she remained married to Sieber, the couple had an open marriage and both had relationships with other people. She told Marjorie Rosen: “In Europe it doesn’t mater if you’re a man or a woman. We make love with anyone we find attractive”.

The woman who sucked lemon wedges between takes to keep her mouth muscles tight scandalised audiences by wearing a top hat and tails in Morocco and finishing a song by kissing a female audience member on the lips. She played a prostitute in Dishonoured, Shanghai Express and Blonde Venus. Marlene shrugged off the typecasting by appearing as Frenchy, a Western saloon hostess, in Destry Rides Again eventually becoming the highest paid actress of her time.

When the roles dried up she went back to the stage; but after breaking her leg in one performance, she never returned to acting and spent the last 12 years of her life bed-ridden. Marlene died on 6 May 1992 in Paris of natural causes at the age of 90.

Greta Garbo
The Swedish Sphinx is best known for being mysterious and retiring from public life at the age of 36, rarely leaving her house without a big hat and sunglasses for almost fifty years.

Her stunning looks caught the eye of gay filmmaker Mauritz Stiller, who introduced her to acting. She made 14 silent, films usually playing femme fatales who lured men to their ruination. She was one of the few silent era stars to make the transition successfully into talkies and her husky voice helped her create more complex tragic heroines in films such as Anna Karenina and Camille.

Cross-dressing movie goddess Greta had a relationship with photographer Cecil Beaton as well as with actor John Gilbert, who she left standing at the altar in 1926. Gilbert was a ‘show beau’, one of many men who accompanied Greta to public occasions and hopefully quietened the rumours she had affairs with women. In Diana McLellan’s book The Girls, McLellan argues that Marlene seduced Greta and then gossiped about her shabby undergarments and provincial attitude towards sex. It was Lilyan Tashman, an openly bisexual glamour girl, who taught Greta how to look like a movie star and became the first of many female lovers in Hollywood - others included Mercedes de Acosta and even Louise Brooks.

Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead’s acting career was never as successful on screen as it was on stage. After many attempts at a Hollywood hit she saw some of her most significant stage roles performed on screen by Bette Davis. Davis won an Oscar for her part in Jezebel and won an Academy Award for playing Regina Giddens in The Little Foxes, roles that Tallulah had originated.

Tallulah moved to London in 1923 and for the next several years she was the most popular actress in the West End. She took a lot of drugs, chain smoked and would even take her clothes off and chat in the nude. Her voracious sexual appetite included affairs with Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo and claims she slept with Barbara Stanwyck. “My daddy warned me about men and booze but he didn’t say a word about women and cocaine!” she once famously said.

In 1950 she became Mistress of Ceremonies for the radio programme The Big Show. Tallulah became the object of the show’s humour, often laughing at her fondness for bourbon, growing old and her diminishing sexual appeal.

On 12 December 1968 Tallulah died of pneumonia in New York leaving a legacy with her famous phrase, “Hello, Dahling”.

Ellen Degeneres
It’s fitting that out and proud Ellen DeGeneres is the host of this year’s Oscars as she’s won more awards for her stand-up performances, talk shows and sitcoms than her mantelpiece has room for.

Born in Louisiana, Ellen was brought up as a Christian Scientist until she was 13, and, after being asked to tell jokes at friends’ parties, she graduated to her own sitcom, Ellen. She and her character on the show came out of the closet on national television in 1997 prompting televangelist Jerry Falwell to call her “Ellen Degenerate” in one of his sermons. Ellen responded: "Really? He called me that? Wow, I haven't heard that since third grade."

Ellen used to go out with Anne Heche, but after several years Heche left Ellen to marry a man. She’s now dating former Ally McBeal star Portia de Rossi.

Portia De Rossi
Born Amanda Lee Rogers, Portia de Rossi changed her name when she was 15 because she says, “In retrospect, I think it was largely due to my struggle about being gay. I was trying to find things I could identify myself with”.

Portia was born in Australia and was once a child model. She became a regular on quirky TV drama Ally McBeal as über-bitch lawyer Nelle Porter and now stars in US comedy Arrested Development.

Once married to a documentary filmmaker, she was very shy about her sexuality and never confirmed she was dating the daughter of Barbara Back and Ringo Starr, Francesca Gregorini, for four years. She left Francesca for Ellen DeGeneres, but it wasn’t until after 2005 that Portia came out in an interview for The Advocate magazine.

Anne Heche
Life hasn’t always been kind to Anne Heche. She claimed her father molested her during her childhood and gave her herpes. He then admitted to being gay to his family, before dying of AIDS in 1983. In that same year her older brother was killed in a freak car accident.

Anne’s mother says she doesn’t believe her late husband sexually abused her daughter and tours the nation speaking with reformed gay groups claiming her prayers cured Anne of her lesbianism.

In Anne’s biography Call Me Crazy she claims to have been mentally ill for the first 31 years of her life and to have an alter ego that was the daughter of God and half-sister of Jesus named ‘Celestia’.

Anne has starred in Donnie Brasco, Six Days and Seven Nights as the romantic lead opposite Harrison Ford and Gus van Sant’s remake of Psycho.

She dated Steve Martin and Fleetwood Mac crooner Lindsey Buckingham before her high profile relationship with Ellen DeGeneres that lasted four years until she fell for a male cameraman she met while filming a comedy special for her girlfriend. The couple married and had a son, but have now split.

Rosie O’Donnell
After starting her career as a stand-up comic, Rosie gained notice as an outspoken talk show host on The Rosie O’Donnell Show. During her time on the show she was nicknamed ‘The Queen of Nice’ for her style of light-hearted banter with her guests.

More recently though she has sparked controversy by taking the mickey out of the way the Chinese speak (“ching-chong”), being an advocate of gun control and calling for President Bush’s impeachment.

Rosie’s first feature film was A League of Her Own where she played a wise-crackling baseball player opposite Madonna in 1988. In 2002 Rosie left her talk show and came out playing a lesbian character in Will & Grace. She went on to star in the US version of Queer As Folk, Nip/Tuck and produced Boy George’s stage show Taboo in the US.

Rosie once went out with a woman who suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder and posed as an under-aged teenager who had become pregnant after being raped. Now she has three adopted children and a fourth child conceived by sperm donation with her long-term lover Nickelodeon executive Kelli Carpenter.

Lily Tomlin
In Lily Tomlin’s life as a comedic actress she has played a bag lady, an existential detective, a 15-year old punk performance artist and a hang-gliding paraplegic. In 1975 she was Oscar nominated for her role in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played opposite Dolly Parton in comedy Nine to Five and most recently appeared alongside Dustin Hoffman and Jude Law in I Heart Huckabees.

In 1999 Lily played the overtly lesbian role of Georgie in Tea With Mussolini. She’s never made a brou-ha-ha about being a lesbian, but in 2001 officially acknowledged her homosexuality and her relationship with her long-term scriptwriter Jane Wagner in an interview for The Advocate.

She supports feminist and gay organizations GLAAD and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Centre and narrated documentary The Celluloid Closet, based on the history of gays in the cinema.

Fiona Shaw
Classical actress Fiona Shaw is mostly recognised on our screens for her role as Aunt Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter movies and a mental murdering mother in The Black Dahlia. Awarded an honorary CBE in 2001, Fiona has spent most of her acting career on stage in productions such as Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Taming of the Shrew and Hedda Gabler and won countless awards for her performances on stage.

Fiona played the title role in a version of Richard III and in The Triumph of Love her character Leontine was seduced by Mira Sorvino’s princess.

Fiona met Saffron Burrows when they appeared together in the National Theatre's production of The PowerBook, a play based on the novel of the same name by lesbian writer Jeanette Winterson. Neither actress has publicly confirmed or denied the relationship and just get on with living their lives together.

Saffron Burrows
Saffron started modelling at 15 after being discovered in Covent Garden by the same scout who discovered Naomi Campbell and shot to stardom as Nan, the boyfriend-stealing best friend of Minnie Driver's character in Circle of Friends. She went on to appear in Frida, Troy and shark shocker Deep Blue Sea.

Openly bisexual she dated Alan Cumming for two years (he says that their relationship helped him accept his own bisexuality) and once said that she fancied Hilary Clinton long before she met Bill, who she is also rumoured to have dated. But in 2000 she told Tatler magazine, “I prefer the company of women” when she was in a relationship with director Mike Figgis and that relationship ended after five years, when she met Fiona Shaw whilst acting in Figgis’ play The PowerBook.

Deeply private, she once told The Scotsman: "Was I confused? Not at all. I love men and I love women. I just happen to be in a calm relationship right now."

Want to know? Then get The Girls: Sappho Goes to Hollywood online and save some money to put towards Tallulah: The Life and Times of a Leading Lady and The Queer Encyclopaedia of Film and Television.