Biography And Actress Career Of Laverne Cox – First Transgender Nominated For An Emmy

We are learning more about embracing the different identities that exist in our world today. For those who are in the minority of these identities, the battle for inclusion and acceptance is a lifelong struggle. When these minorities not only survive these battles but triumph, it is a thing of joy and one worthy of celebration. One of those leading the pack of the triumphant is Laverne Cox, first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy.

Biography

Laverne Cox is an American actress and a prominent LGBT advocate. A transgender herself, she rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on Netflix’s hit series, Orange Is the New Black. Born in Mobile, Alabama on the 29th of May, 1972, she was raised by a single mother and grandmother within the AME Zion church. Laverne Cox has an identical twin brother, M Lamar, who portrayed the pre-transitioning version of her character in Orange Is the New Black. Having been exposed to the discrimination that comes with her identity at a young age, the actress once stated that she attempted suicide at the age of 11 when she noticed that she had developed feelings about her male classmates. She had also been bullied for several years for not acting the way someone assigned 'male' at birth was supposed to act.

Laverne is graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Alabama where she studied creative writing before switching to dance. She then further studied for two years at the Indiana University Bloomington before making a transfer to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, where she switched to acting, which would eventually lead her to stardom.

In case you were wondering if Laverne Cox is a transgender actress, the answer is yes. Through her career, she has been a trailblazer for the transgender community. Over the years, she became the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy, to be on the cover of Time magazine, to win a Daytime Emmy as an Executive Producer and have a waxwork in Madame Tussauds.

Career

Laverne Cox’s Hollywood career started as a contestant on the first season of ‘I Want to Work for Diddy’, after which she was approached by VH1 about show ideas. It was from this search for ideas that the makeover television series, TRANSform Me, came. It made Cox the first African-American transgender person to produce and star in her own TV show. Both shows, I Want to Work for Diddy and TRANSform Me were nominated for GLAAD media awards for outstanding reality programs, and when Diddy won the award in 2009, Cox accepted the award, delivering a speech that would be described by the San Francisco Sentinel as ‘among the most poignant because it reminded us how important it is to tell our stories, all our stories’.

Before starring in her breakout role in Orange Is the New Black, Laverne Cox acted in a number of TV shows and films such as Law & Order: SVU and Musical Chairs. When Laverne Cox started her first season on Orange Is the New Black, she was still appearing at a restaurant on the Lower East Side as a drag queen, in the same restaurant she had initially applied to work as a waitress.

Laverne described her character as a ‘multi-dimensional character who the audience can really empathize with – all of the sudden they’re empathizing with a real trans person. And for trans folks out there, who need to see representations of people who are like them and of their experiences, that’s when it becomes really important’. Cox’s role in Orange Is the New Black provided her a platform to speak on the rights of trans people and she has used it with great impact.

While Laverne Cox has garnered accolades from fans across the globe and her work has been recognized by her peers with various awards, Laverne Cox is seen by her LGBT peers, and many others as a trailblazer for the transgender community. Her activism and spreading of awareness of the rights and discrimination of the community have led to a growth in the conversation about transgender people, especially transgender women.

The right of the discriminated against starts from being seen as normal people like the rest of us and there is no better way to start by letting them reach the heights that heteronormative people have reached and Laverne Cox has on multiple occasions reached those heights.