Lea Michele remembers Cory Monteith as ‘the greatest man’

TORONTO — Actress Lea Michele said this week she is still trying to come to terms with the death of her boyfriend and Glee co-star Cory Monteith.

“I really feel like I’m still trying to figure out all of this,” Michele said in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres airing Thursday. “It’s only been a few months.”

Monteith died in July of a toxic mix of heroin and champagne in his suite at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel in Vancouver. The Canadian actor was 31.

“I’m trying to do my best for him because I know that’s what he would have wanted,” said Michele, 27.

“I literally lived every day of my life feeling like the luckiest girl. I just thought he was the greatest man.”

Michele said following Monteith’s death she hid from the public eye in the home of actress Kate Hudson.

“It was so helpful to have a safe place to process and to just have a minute to breath before getting back to my house, which has a lot of memories,” she recalled. “I’m so thankful to her.”

Michele said it was important to get back to the set of Glee as quickly as possible.

“Going to work is no harder than being at home and opening up a closet and seeing a pair of shoes,” she told DeGeneres.

“Grief goes with you every day, whatever you’re doing. I’d rather be at work with the people that I love that are going through the same thing. It obviously has its own triggers but at the end of the day I feel so safe there. They’re my family.”