Is Kelly Marie Tran dating? What we know as Star Wars actress recalls ridicule and persecution before coming out as queer

Kelly Marie Tran is perhaps most recognized for her role as the character Rose Tico, who made her debut in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. She has recently made headlines for sharing insights into her personal life. Though Tran has kept most of her private life under wraps, she has now confirmed that she is queer and also in a relationship.

In an interview with Them to promote her new movie The Wedding Banquet, Tran also confirmed that she has a girlfriend she has been with for two years.

While she did not name her partner, she did drop sweet details about their connection, including the fact that her girlfriend has a habit of strolling through a Zoom call.

"My girlfriend has this habit of just walking through Zoom calls. She doesn’t even know she’s doing it,"she said to Them.

Kelly Marie Tran didn’t plan her coming out. In a press interview with Vanity Fair, she found herself talking about her identity as she was excited to tell her story.

Her openness comes after years of public scrutiny and online harassment. After her first Star Wars film, Tran was subjected to a wave of racist and sexist backlash. She was the first woman of color to lead a role in the franchise.

"I was already being ridiculed. There were comments about my race or comments about me being a woman. I already felt like I was being persecuted for those things," she told Entertainment Weekly.

Her path toward self-acceptance and visibility has supposedly been influenced by her art. The Wedding Banquet, a contemporary retelling of Ang Lee’s 1993 queer classic, provided her space, protection and the ability to connect to her identity in a manner she hadn’t done before.

"I don't think that I could have done that without the support of my amazing cast and crew and friends."

In the movie, Kelly Marie Tran plays Angela, one half of a lesbian couple dealing with IVF treatments and a green card marriage scheme.

Kelly Marie Tran’s early career and rise to fame

Kelly Marie Tran, born January 17, 1989, was the daughter of Vietnamese refugees. According to Britannica, Tran grew up in a working-class family and worked at a frozen yogurt shop to make ends meet while pursuing acting in her early career.

She attended UCLA, where she studied communications, having done musical theater, voice, and piano in high school. After college, Tran juggled day jobs as an office assistant while performing sketch and improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade and The Second City, where she became part of an Asian American female comedy troupe.

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She also performed in CollegeHumor videos and had small parts in short films and television series like This Indie Thing and Ladies Like Us.

Kelly Marie Tran’s big break came in 2017 with her casting as Rose Tico in Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi. She also became the first Asian woman to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair.

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