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Clementine Ford Confirms Relationship with Linda Perry

This week’s Soap Opera Digest magazine features an interview with out actress Clementine Ford, in which she opens up about her move to daytime television, her girlfriend and why talking about being gay on a soap opera is like asking what it’s like to be straight in a dentist’s office. (Answer: “It’s just my life.”)

While Ford doesn’t find the news about her sexuality to be all that noteworthy, she was warm and open about her relationship with singer/songwriter Linda Perry, telling Soap Opera Digest:

Every time I do an interview, she asks, ‘Did you mention me?’ We go to events together and we don’t try to hide anything. We’re just a couple. We’re both like, “I can’t wait to show you off.”

The couple had a chance to do just that at last month’s charity event, An Evening with Women, which was spearheaded by Perry herself.

You’re probably familiar with Linda Perry, even if you think you’re not. In addition to being a popular singer in the late ’90s, Perry has written and produced some me ga-hits for current recording artists, including Pink‘s “Get This Party Started,” Gwen Stefani’s “What Are You Waiting For?,” Alicia Keys‘ “Superwoman” and a half-dozen chart-toppers for Christina Aguilera, including her gay-inclusive hit song “Beautiful.”

“It’s funny,” Ford told Soap Opera Digest, “[Linda’s] enormously more well-known than I am.”

Maybe not for long.

Almost as much has been made of Ford’s leap to daytime television as it has of her coming out. In April she joined that cast of CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless as the fourth incarnation of Mackenzie Browning, ex-wife and maybe-cousin of Billy Abbott.

Ford told Soap Opera Digest that she shut down her agent when he first mentioned meeting with Y&R producers, but when he finally convinced her to sit down with them, she was sold. She said her friends gave her conflicting advice about joining the show, but her mom supports anything she wants to do in terms of work, and all the haters “can suck it.”

Prior to beginning work on Y&R, Ford told The Advocate that joining such an established cast was “nerve-wracking,” much like walking onto The L Word set, but that she knew things would be easier once she “hit her stride.”

Apparently she’s found that pace. “Soaps is actor bootcamp,” she told Soap Opera Digest. “You learn about lighting, being prepared and knowing where to stand. You have to be on.”

The article touches on what it was like growing up with a mom like Cybill Shepherd (“Her sense of humor is way out there, while mine can be dark and dry. But I can do a pratfall with the best of them.”), on getting her coming-out haircut (“My hair was really long and blonde for years but I wanted to be free from that, so I cut it.”), and on how she got her name (“My Darling Clementine. It’s different but it’s classic!”).

Ford briefly mentions her character from The L Word, saying she really likes and misses Molly’s toughness tempered with her vulnerability.

Mostly, though, it appears that Ford isn’t looking backwards – not to her highly-publicized and much-debated coming out or at her former accomplishments as the daughter of Cybill Shepherd. She’s in a relationship with Linda Perry and enjoying every day of boot camp – just another actress, out in Hollywood.

You can read the full interview with Clementine Ford in this week’s Soap Opera Digest, the one with Secrets!, Murder Shocker! and Tragedy! on the cover. (Oh, that’s not a unique description? OK, it’s the one from May 26.)

Thanks to AfterEllen.com reader Shortypants for the tip!

Check out the fan site Clementine-Ford.net for more news and photos, and follow Ford on Twitter at twitter.com/dirtyballerina

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