In January 2014, Cox joined trans woman Carmen Carrera on Katie Couric's syndicated show, Katie.
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 provides her a platform to speak on the rights of trans people. In that year, she stated, "Sophia is written as a multi-dimensional character who the audience can really empathize with-all of the sudden they're empathizing with a real Trans person.
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In 2013, Cox began her recurring role in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black as Sophia Burset, a trans woman sent to prison for credit-card fraud.
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Both those shows were nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding reality program, and when Diddy won in 2009, Cox accepted the award at the ceremony, giving a speech described by the San Francisco Sentinel as "among the most poignant because reminded us how important it is to tell our stories, all of our stories." She has also acted in a number of TV shows and films, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Bored to Death, and Musical Chairs.
From that came the makeover television series TRANSform Me, which made Cox the first African-American transgender person to produce and star in her own TV show. Laverne Cox at PaleyFest 2014 representing Orange is the New Black.Ĭox appeared as a contestant on the first season of I Want to Work for Diddy afterwards she was approached by VH1 about show ideas. 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). 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. She is a graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Alabama, where she studied creative writing before switching to dance. 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 has an identical twin brother, M Lamar, who portrayed the pre- transitioning Sophia (as Marcus) in Orange Is the New Black.
Ĭox was born in Mobile, Alabama, and was raised by a single mother and grandmother within the AME Zion church. She is also the first openly transgender person to have a wax figure of herself at Madame Tussauds. Cox is the first transgender person to appear on the cover of a Cosmopolitan magazine, with her February 2018 cover on the South African edition. In June 2014, Cox became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine. Kolzak Award for her work as an advocate for the transgender community. In April 2014, Cox was honored by GLAAD with its Stephen F. Ĭox 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. broadcast TV as Cameron Wirth on CBS 's Doubt. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S. 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 transgender woman to win the award. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. Laverne Cox (born May 29, 1972) is an American actress and LGBT advocate.