Lena Dunham Reveals College Date Rape Experience To 'NPR's' Terry Gross: "It Was A Painful Experience Physically and Emotionally"

Lena Dunham recently sat down with NPR's Terry Gross for an interview and reveals details about a terrifying and challenging aspect of her life... when she was date raped in college.

The Girls actress is now releasing a memoir she has been recently promoting, Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" 

There are parts in the book that were difficult for Dunham to address and she discussed these choices to include them in her memoir with Gross.

"It was a painful experience physically and emotionally, and one I spent a long time trying to reconcile," she said. "At the time that it happened, it wasn't something that I was able to be honest about. I was able to share pieces, but I sort of used the lens of humor, which has always been my default mode, to try to talk around it."

She continued that she spent years scared until she found her voice. " I spent so much time ashamed, I don't feel that way anymore. And it's not because of my job, it's not because of my boyfriend, it's not because of feminism – thought all those things helped – It's because I told the story. And I still feel like myself and I feel less alone."

The Emmy Award winner is open about many things including her belief of same-sex marriage. To show her support, Dunham will not get married to her boyfriend, Jack Antonoff, (lead guitarist of Fun.) until it's legalized.

Dunham continues to open up where the rape took place and how it was her lowest experience, "I was at a party, drunk, waiting for attention – and somehow that felt like such a shameful starting-off point that I didn't know how to reconcile what had come after. But I knew that it wasn't right and I knew in some way that this experience had been forced on me."