The Canadian Press/Getty Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt's comfort with calling himself a feminist influenced him.

NEW YORK — Known internationally as a self-proclaimed feminist, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says it was a video by Hollywood actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt that convinced him the moniker was OK for men to use. Speaking with Melinda Gates, who praised him effusively for his "passionate belief of empowering women" and his "transformative" gender-balanced cabinet, Trudeau recalled being told by a fellow student at McGill University that he couldn't call himself a feminist.

"She said: 'No. Only women can be feminists. You can be supportive or you can be an ally, but it's our thing,'" he said, as he tried to calm the laughter of the Goalkeepers' audience, a conference organized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to pressure the international community to meet its global goals. "Twenty, 25 years ago, that was certainly a stronger perspective." Trudeau never openly called himself a feminist, he said, until he saw a video by Gordon-Levitt, in 2014, looking at the camera and calling himself a feminist. It was like, 'Oh, OK, it's OK for men to say that they are feminists in a public sense. Great, I'm going to finally do that.Justin Trudeau Gordon-Levitt, in his YouTube video, explains that feminism to him means that "your gender doesn't have to define who you are." "It wasn't that, 'Oh, I'm going to follow his lead.' It was like, 'Oh, OK, it's OK for men to say that they are feminists in a public sense. Great, I'm going to finally do that,'" Trudeau told the crowd. By calling themselves feminists, the prime minister said, men could help be part of the solution and to realign the balance between the genders. "That's why I will keep saying I'm a feminist until... it is met with yeah, 'OK, we know that. Move on. It's not a big deal anymore.'"

The Canadian Press Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes his way onto the stage for an armchair discussion with Melinda Gates in New York City on Sept. 20, 2017.