Laverne Cox

At 40 years old, Laverne Cox has this physical status:

Laverne Cox (born May 29, 1972) is an American actress and LGBTQ+ advocate.

She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in any acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990.

In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, making her the first openly transgender woman to win the award.

In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS's Doubt.Cox appeared as a contestant on the first season of VH1's reality show I Want to Work for Diddy, and co-produced and co-hosted the VH1 makeover television series TRANSform Me. In April 2014, Cox was honored by GLAAD with its Stephen F. Kolzak Award for her work as an advocate for the transgender community.

In June 2014, Cox became the first openly transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine.

Cox is the first openly transgender person to appear on the cover of a Cosmopolitan magazine, with her February 2018 cover on the South African edition.

She is also the first openly transgender person to have a wax figure of herself at Madame Tussauds.

Early life

Cox was born in Mobile, Alabama, and was raised by a single mother and grandmother within the AME Zion church. She has an identical twin brother, M Lamar, who portrayed the pre-transitioning Sophia (as Marcus) in Orange Is the New Black. Cox has stated that she attempted suicide at the age of 11, when she noticed that she had developed feelings for her male classmates and had been bullied for several years for not acting "the way someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act".

She is a graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Alabama, where she studied creative writing before switching to dance. She then studied for two years at Indiana University Bloomington before transferring to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, where she switched from dancing (specifically classical ballet) to acting. During 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 (where she had applied initially to work as a waitress).

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Career

On the first season of I Want to Work for Diddy, Cox appeared as a contestant; after that, she was contacted by VH1 to discuss show concepts. Cox was the first African-American transgender person to produce and star in her own television show, and from there came the makeover television series TRANSFORM Me. Both of those shows were selected for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding reality program, and Cox accepted the award at the ceremony in 2009, giving a speech that was "among the most moving because it reminds us how vital it is to tell our stories, as well as all of our stories." In addition, she has appeared in a number of television shows and films, including Law & Order: The Special Victims Unit, Bored to Death, and Musical Chairs.

Cox, a trans woman sent to prison for credit card fraud in 2013, began playing in Netflix's Orange is the New Black as Sophia Burset, a trans woman sent to jail for credit card fraud. "Sophia is written as a multi-dimensional character with whom the audience will empathize with," she wrote in that year, and then they're empathizing with someone who isn't a humanist. And that's when it becomes really important for Trans people out there, who need to see representations of people like them and their lives. Cox's work in Orange gives her a platform to campaign for trans rights.

Cox joined transwoman Carmen Carrera on Katie Couric's syndicated show, Katie, in January 2014. Couric referred to transgender people as "transgender," and after being refused by Carrera on the subject of her surgeries, specifically what genital reconstruction she had done, she asked Cox the same thing.

Cox responded,

Couric's "clueless" and "invasive" line of inquiry was covered by news outlets including Salon, The Huffington Post, and Business Insider.

Cox appeared on the front page of Time on June 9, 2014; he was interviewed by Katy Steinmetz on the article "The Transgender Tipping Point," which was also on the front page; this makes him the first transgender person on Time's cover.

In 2014, Cox became the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category: Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black. She appeared in John Legend's video for the song "You & I (Nobody in the World)" ("Nobody in the World).

Following the conviction of activist (and transgender person of color) Monica Jones, Cox began working in Phoenix, Arizona, against a bill that allows police to arrest anyone suspected of "manifesting prostitution" and offends transgender people of color. "Trans people are being targeted all over the world simply for being who they are." Cox said. "Bomen's Girls, girls like me, and Monica are less than [others] in this country," a manifesto law states. The Sylvia Rivera Law Project released a video in which Cox read a letter from transgender prisoner Synthia China Blast, addressing common problems faced by trans prisoners. "I was unaware of the charges for which she had been found guilty," Cox wrote on her Tumblr when she learned that Blast was found guilty of the 1993 rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl. I would have never read the letter if I had been aware of those allegations.

In late 2014, Cox appeared in the annual "Rebels" issue of Vogue. V asked celebrities and artists to nominate who they felt as their personal rebels for the issue, and Natasha Lyonne nominated Cox. Cox, along with actors Alfre Woodard, Nicole Beharie, and Danai Gurira, were among the front page of Essence magazine in October 2014.

The T Word, an hour-long documentary co-produced and narrated by Cox, premiered on MTV and Logo simultaneously on October 17, 2014, according to Laverne Cox. Cox was featured on the fifth anniversary cover of CNDY magazine alongside 13 other transgender people, including Janet Mock, Carmen Carrera, Geena Rocero, Isis King, Leyna Leyna, Leyna Leyna, Leyna Puyny, Niki M'nray, Petty, Carmen Xtravaganza, and Yasmine Petty, along with 13 other transgender people in the same year.

In 2015, Cox received an Outstanding Special Class Special Award as Executive Producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word. Cox was the first transgender woman to win a Daytime Emmy as an Executive Producer, as well as The T Word is the first trans narrative to be nominated for a Daytime Emmy. Cox, among other things, was the first transgender actress to do so at the Allure annual "Nudes" issue in 2006.

The first issue of Entertainment Weekly, a total not-straight issue) of June 11, 2015, will exclusively focus on gay, lesbian, and transgender entertainment.

The Human Rights Campaign in June 2016 released a video in honor of the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; Cox and others told the tales of the people murdered there.

Cox joined Doubt on CBS in 2017 as transgender advocate Cameron Wirth. However, CBS announced that they were halting the series after only two episodes had been broadcast, leaving the future of the remaining unaired episodes uncertain. Following poor viewership, it was the first official cancellation of the 2016-2017 season. The remaining 11 episodes will be shown on Saturday, beginning July 1, according to CBS later.

In 2017, Cox was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her role in Orange Is the New Black.

In addition, in 2017, Cox worked with Zackary Drucker, Molly Crabapple, and Kim Boekbinder in making a film about transgender history and resistance, which Cox narrated. Cox was one of the four faces of the fall campaign for the Ivy Park line of clothing that year.

In February 2019, Cox headlined the New York Fashion Week show for 11 Honoré, a luxury e-retailer focusing on plus-sized designer fashion.

In Taylor Swift's "You Need to Calm Down" music video, Cox appeared in a Taylor Swift's "You Need to Calm Down" music video, which was released on June 17, 2019.

She was one of fifteen people chosen by guest editor Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to appear on the front of British Vogue in September 2019. This made Cox the first transgender woman to be on the front cover of British Vogue.

Chase Strangio, an ACLU lawyer, was brought by Cox to the 2019 Emmy Awards in September, 2019, and the phrase "Oct 8," "Title VII," and "Supreme Court" were included in the custom rainbow clutch. This proceeding was brought in connection with R.G.'s appeal to the United States Supreme Court. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. vs. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in which Strangio was one of the lawyers representing Aimee Stephens, a trans woman who was banned from her position at a funeral home. On the red carpet of the forthcoming court case, Cox and Strangio spoke with reporters. Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen, a Cox executive produced the documentary The documentary The documentary Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen premiered on Netflix on January 27, 2020.

In May 2021, E!

Starting in January 2022, Cox will take over Live from the Red Carpet, replacing Giuliana Rancic. She appeared in Netflix's dystopian fantasy film Uglies directed by McG in December 2021, based on a Scott Westerfeld book of the same name.

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Honors and awards

• 2013 – Anti-Violence Project 2013 Courage Award honoree
• 2013 – Reader's Choice Award at Out Magazine's OUT100 Gala, honoring the magazine's selection of 2013's 100 "most compelling people of the year".
• 2014 – Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine.
• 2014 – Included in the annual Root 100; this list honors "standout black leaders, innovators and culture shapers" aged 45 and younger.
• 2014 – Topped the British newspaper The Guardian's third annual World Pride Power List, which ranks the world's most influential LGBT people.
• 2014 – Stephen F. Kolzak Award from GLAAD.
• 2014 – Named to the EBONY Power 100 list.
• 2015 – Named to the 2015 OUT Power 50 List.
• 2015 – Included in the People World's Most Beautiful Women List.
• 2015 – Three Twins Ice Cream in San Francisco renamed its chocolate orange confetti ice cream Laverne Cox's Chocolate Orange is the New Black for Pride weekend.
• 2015 – Named in the 2015 Time 100 Most Influential People List; her entry was written by Jazz Jennings.
• 2015 – Named by Forum for Equality as one of their 31 Icons of the LGBT History Month.
• 2015 – Winner of a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as Executive Producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word. This made Cox the first transgender woman to win a Daytime Emmy as an Executive Producer; as well, The T Word is the first trans documentary to win a Daytime Emmy.
• 2016 – Awarded Honorary Doctorate from The New School.
• 2017 – Named to the 2017 OUT Power 50 List.
• 2018 – Received the Claire Skiffington Vanguard Award from Transgender Law Center. The award recognizes transgender community members who have been part of the movement's vanguard.
• 2022 – Received the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal from the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University.