Lea Michele On Cory Monteith’s Death: ‘There Is An Empowerment That Comes With Grief’; ‘Glee’ Star Speaks For The First Time About Boyfriend’s Death On Ellen

Ever since Cory Monteith died, his girlfriend Lea Michele remained silent about her real feelings. Five months after Monteith's demise, Michele chose to put up a brave front. However, the 27-year-old actress finally talked about grieving on 'The Ellen DeGeneres' show.

Michele's Ellen interview revealS how the actress is trying to cope up with her beau's passing away. "I'm doing well. It's certainly been a pretty rough year, but I've been surrounded by such great people, such great family," she starts.

She likewise thanks fellow actress Kate Hudson who immensely helped her: "She was so wonderful to basically give me her home to myself and my family. It was so helpful to just, basically, have a safe place to process and just have a minute to just breathe before getting back to my house with just a lot of memories and stuff. So being someplace else to just have a moment was really nice."

What surprised fans was Michele's decision to immediately get back to work after Monteith died. She explains that she's doing her best to move on knowing that it will make her late boyfriend happy: "I'm just trying to do my best for him because I know that that's what he would have wanted and to just do my best and to you know, hopefully make something positive for where I go in the rest of my life."

Ellen also shared a special recorded interview dating back to 2012 where Cory confessed he was romantically involved with Lea Michelle. Watch the episode below.

She also says that it is a matter of choice whether you'll be trapped in sadness or do something good for your life: "It's been only a few months, but my mom has experienced a lot of loss in her life and she told me at one point, she said, there is an empowerment that comes with grief, at some point you find it. It's very hard, but you will find it and I think at a certain point you can choose to sort of fall from this or you can choose to rise."

Michele starts to tear up when the talk show host showed Monteith's clip when he confessed having romantic affiliations with 'Glee's' Rachel Berry.

 "It's one of my favourite memories. I remember when he came home that night he kind of puffed out his chest and he was like, 'I talked about you on Ellen today.' I was so happy. He's such a private person and I literally lived everyday of my life feeling like the luckiest girl in the whole world," Michele adds.

Even if Monteith is not with him anymore, Michele will eternally consider him as her "greatest man".

Viewers should likewise look forward to Michele's performance of 'Cannonball', one of the singles from her debut album 'Louder'. She confesses that listening to the song everyday helps her in moving on.

Monteith and Michele started dating in 2011 until the actor's death in July 2013 because of substance overdose.