The actress Laverne Cox was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1972. She didn’t exactly have an easy life (the way most women who are assigned male at birth usually struggle, such as when she got bullied for not being “masculine” enough) but she found solace in the artistic world. When she got older she studied creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, before switching to dance and ultimately acting by the time she attended Marymount Manhattan College in New York City.

She received mainstream attention when she appeared as a contestant in the first season of the VH1 reality series I Want to Work for Diddy in 2008, after which VH1 approached her with other show ideas, which led to the makeover series TRANSform Me (2010) in which Cox and a team of other trans women including Jamie Clayton and Nina Poon would spend each episode giving a cisgender female contestant a makeover. It was pretty significant at the time for being the first TV series produced by and starring an African-American transgender woman.

Laverne Cox also acted in several TV shows including Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and the HBO comedy Bored to Death, but her first recurring role and her most famous role is Sophia Burset in Netflix’s acclaimed women’s prison comedy-drama Orange Is the New Black (2013-19). Cox liked the role of a trans woman who was sent to prison for credit card fraud, because the character was written in a multidimensional and empathetic way. The role also earned Cox an Emmy nomination and put her on the map in Hollywood.

Other TV shows that Laverne Cox had guest roles on include the MTV teen comedy Faking It, Bravo’s scripted drama Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce, The Mindy Project, Tuca & Bertie, Dear White People, A Black Lady Sketch Show, Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Blacklist. She had recurring roles in other shows as well, but none of them were as popular as Orange Is the New Black. Those shows included the CBS drama Doubt (2017) which starred Cox as an attorney (and got cancelled after only two episodes aired) and Shonda Rhimes’ short-lived Netflix drama Inventing Anna (2022).

But Cox recently got a significant addition to her IMDB page this year when she co-created and starred in the sitcom Clean Slate (2025) opposite comedian George Wallace as her father. Clean Slate follows Wallace as an estranged father who finds out his son transitioned into a woman after the two lived apart for 23 years. It is actually the last show Norman Lear executive produced before he died, and like many of his previous shows, it is receiving a positive reaction from those who have seen it. Wallace and Cox intended for Clean Slate to be a feel-good comedy about an old-school father getting used to his “son” now being his daughter, and something tells me it will be a relatable show for a lot of viewers. I’m in the middle of watching it right now and it really does a good job pulling off the balancing act that many classic sitcoms like All in the Family and Good Times did: talking about real-world issues with likable characters and feel-good comedy. Leave it to Norman Lear to tackle relevant and divisive modern issues with humor and heart even in death.

One of the best things to come out of Laverne Cox’s fame is that her growing visibility in the mainstream eye meant that she has had many opportunities to change the mainstream perspective about trans people, such as when she called out the media’s constant preoccupation with personal issues like the details of gender reassignment surgery, which many trans people not only see as invasive and dehumanizing but also, as Cox told Katie Couric in 2014, it takes the focus away from issues effecting trans people that are actually important, such as how discrimination towards trans people statistically makes their lives more difficult and often more dangerous.

2014 was also the year that Cox became the first transgender person on the cover of Time and the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for her role in Orange Is the New Black. Cox also executive produced an excellent Netflix documentary called Disclosure (2020) about the history of transgender representation throughout cinematic history which I (film history nerd that I am) obviously enjoyed, and she continues to be an activist for transgender rights all while continuing to pursue her passion for acting. Which is something I always appreciated about her, even though she shouldn’t have to be a civil rights activist (seriously, when is the conservative backlash going to stop and when are trans people going to finally be accepted in modern society??) Well, if we’re going to have an actor who is also a model for trans representation, at least we have the best possible person for the job.