Bruce Jenner, who is known to one generation as an Olympic athlete and another as a reality television star, told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer in an interview that he is transitioning to a woman.

At the start of the interview, Jenner was immediately emotional and said that he had been dealing with gender identity questions for years. When Sawyer asked him if he was a woman, he said he already sees himself as one.

“For all intents and purposes, I’m a woman,” Jenner emphatically told Sawyer. “People look at me differently. They see you as this macho male, but my heart and my soul and everything that I do in life -- it is part of me. That female side is part of me. That’s who I am.”

The interview aired as part of a two-hour special 20/20 epsiode Friday night and was preceded by countless commercials promoting it. There have also been rumors from tabloids over the past year, as paparazzi cameras caught Jenner’s changing looks. So heading into the interview, many knew what Jenner was going to admit, but how he did so had an impact on everyone watching.

Jenner often referred to himself using male pronouns, although he did use “her” at one point. The 65-year-old said that he was “always telling a lie.”

“I look at it this way—Bruce always telling a lie. He’s lived a lie his whole life about who he is. And I can’t do that any longer,” Jenner told Sawyer. “My brain is much more female than it is male... It’s hard for people to understand that, but that’s what my soul is.”

While it was only recently that his changes were becoming noticeable, Jenner said that he had been feeling differently about his gender for decades. He even recalled a time when he was just 8 or 9 years old and put on a dress that was his mother’s or sister’s when they weren’t home. Jenner said his ex-wives knew as well, as did his sister, but they kept it a secret from his mother and 10 children until recently.

Jenner did not reveal what female name he wants to use, but joked that it wouldn’t start with a “K.”

Jenner became a reality TV star through his marriage to Kris Jenner, the matriarch of the Kardashian family. Kris did not provide ABC with a comment, but she did tweet, “Not only was I able to call him my husband for 25 years and father of my children, I am now able to call him my hero.”

“I just can’t pull the curtain any longer,” Jenner told Sawyer. “I’ve built a nice little life, I just can’t—again, Bruce lives a lie. She is not a lie. I just can’t do it anymore.”


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