It's no secret that but it's not often we hear people reflect on it honestly.
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has opened up about the "brutal" anxiety and fear he grappled with while attending boarding school - admitting that he held homophobic beliefs born from deep insecurity.
Speaking to , the 42-year-old father of two explained that he went through "a bit of a rough time" during puberty, including "some stuff with religion and sexuality and everything".
"When I went to boarding school, I walked a bit funny and I bounced a bit and I was also very homophobic because I was like, 'If I’m gay, I’m completely f**ked for eternity' and I was a kid discovering sexuality," he said. "[I thought,] 'Maybe I’m gay, maybe I’m this, maybe I’m that, I can’t be this.'"
The singer continued: "I was terrified and then I walked a bit funny and I was in a boarding school with a bunch of quite hardcore kids who were also gone for their thing and, for a few years, they would very much say, 'You’re definitely gay,' in quite a full-on manner, quite aggressively telling me that and it was weird for me for a few years."
Martin, who spoke out in support of same-sex marriage in Australia during the 2017 postal survey, recalled feeling a "terrible turmoil" at the time.
"I don't know [if I'm gay] and even if I am, I can't be because it's wrong… If I am, I can't be,'" he said.
"I start[ed] to worry about [being gay] for sure. About 15 and a half, I don't know what happened, I was like, 'Yeah, so what?' and then it all just stopped overnight. It was very interesting."
While the star claims he doesn't "know what it was" that changed the way he viewed homosexuality, he suspects it had something to do with "just growing up a bit."
"[I had] a bit more exposure to the world, thinking, 'A lot of my heroes are gay,' or whatever. Whatever they are, it doesn’t really matter," he said. "So what that did was ease a big pressure and then made me question, 'Hey maybe some of this stuff that I’m learning about God and everything - I'm not sure if I subscribe to all of this particular religion.'"
Eventually, though, Martin found clarity around his religious beliefs.
"… So for a few years, that was a bit wobbly and then eventually I just was like, 'OK, I think I have my own relationship with what I think God is and it's not really any one religion for me," he said.
