Sophia Bush Reveals She's Queer and in Love With Soccer Star Ashlyn Harris

Sophia Bush has found love with American soccer star Ashlyn Harris.

The One Tree Hill star publicly came out as queer in a candid personal essay for Glamour, admitting: "I finally feel like I can breathe."

The magazine's April cover star writes that her coming-out at age 41, with her girlfriend by her side, feels like something of a "first birthday" all over again.

"I don't think I can explain how profound that is," she writes. "I feel like I was wearing a weighted vest for who knows how long. I hadn't realized how heavy it was until I finally just put it down. This might sound crazy—but I think other people in trauma recovery will get it—I am taking deep breaths again. I can feel my legs and feet. I can feel my feet in my shoes right now. It makes me want to cry and laugh at the same time."

Bush's revelation comes after filing for divorce from entrepreneur Grant Hughes in August 2023, after one year of marriage. Harris, who played on World Cup-winning U.S. women's national soccer teams in 2015 and 2019, filed for divorce from wife Ali Krieger in September.

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Contrary to the assumptions that Bush and the former soccer pro had an affair and then ended their marriages, the actor emphasizes in her essay that neither cheated.

"The idea that I left my marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous—that, to be crystal-clear, never happened—rather than having taken over a year to do the most soul crushing work of my life? … It feels brutal," Bush writes.

She explains that she and Harris, who'd met in 2019, grew closer after their respective splits last year and helped each other heal, as friends. Then one day, Bush says, she asked Harris to go on a "non-friend-group-hang"—and it was one of "the most surreal experiences" of her life.

"Maybe it was all fated. Maybe it really is a version of invisible string theory. I don't really know," the actor writes. "But I do know that for a sparkly moment I felt like maybe the universe had been conspiring for me. And that feeling that I have in my bones is one I'll hold on to no matter where things go from here."

While Bush says her former partners have known about her interest in women, it took self-love and work for her to get to a place where she feels proud to acknowledge it aloud, and to let herself enter a relationship with another woman.

"It took me 41 years to get here," she says. "When I take stock of the last few years, I can tell you that I have never operated out of more integrity in my life. I hope that's clear enough for everyone speculating out there, while being as gentle as I possibly can be."

Rosa Sanchez is the senior news editor at Harper's Bazaar, working on news as it relates to entertainment, fashion, and culture. Previously, she was a news editor at ABC News and, prior to that, a managing editor of celebrity news at American Media. She has also written features for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets. 

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