Laverne Cox Biography
Lavern Cox 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 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 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.
How old is Laverne Cox? – Age
The American actress is 48 years old as of 29th May 2020. She was born in 1972 in Mobile, Alabama, United States.
Who are Laverne Cox Parents? – Father and mother
The American actress was raised by a single mother and grandmother within the AME Zion church. She 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.
Laverne Cox Siblings
The actress was not the only child in the family. She has an identical twin brother, M Lamar, who portrayed the pre-transitioning Sophia (as Marcus) in Orange Is the New Black. The two were raised together with love from her dear mother and grandmother.
Laverne Cox Education
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 to acting.
Is Laverne Cox in a relationship? – spouse
No the actress is currently single as of now. Previously, she was dating Draper, who is the CEO of the record label Mateo Sound, in 2017. Over the past two years, the pair frequently shared adventures from their relationship on social media. Nine months into their relationship, the actress gushed to PEOPLE about her happiness with Draper, and how an app was to credit for their relationship. They are now separate. She has no children.
Laverne Cox Career
The American actress appeared as a contestant on the first season of I Want to Work for Diddy; afterwards she was approached by VH1 about show ideas. Both those shows were nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding reality program, and when Diddy won in 2009, she accepted the award at the ceremony. She has also acted in a number of TV shows and films, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Bored to Death, and Musical Chairs.
In 2013, the actress 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. 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.
In January 2014, she joined trans woman Carmen Carrera on Katie Couric’s syndicated show, Katie. She was on the cover of the June 9, 2014, issue of Time and was interviewed for the article “The Transgender Tipping Point” by Katy Steinmetz, which ran in that issue and the title of which was also featured on the cover; this makes Cox the first transgender person on the cover of Time.
Later 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.
The actress joined a campaign in 2014 against a Phoenix, Arizona, law which allows police to arrest anyone suspected of “manifesting prostitution,” and which she feels targets transgender women of color, following the conviction of activist Monica Jones.
The actress was featured in the annual “Rebels” issue of V in late 2014. For the issue, V asked celebrities and artists to nominate who they saw as their personal rebels, and Natasha Lyonne nominated Cox.
On October 17, 2014, Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, an hour-long documentary executive-produced and narrated by Cox, premiered on MTV and Logo simultaneously. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as Executive Producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word.
In June 2016, the Human Rights Campaign released a video in tribute to the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting; in the video, Cox and others told the stories of the people killed there.
In 2017, the actress began her role as transgender attorney Cameron Wirth on Doubt on CBS. She was nominated in 2017 for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama series for her role in Orange Is the New Black. She was featured in Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” music video, which was released June 17, 2019.
In September 2019, the actress brought ACLU attorney Chase Strangio as her date to the 2019 Emmy Awards. This action was in reference to the U.S. Supreme court case, in which Strangio was one of the lawyers representing Aimee Stephens, a trans woman who was fired from her job at a funeral home. The actress executive produced the documentary Disclousure: Trans Lives on screen, which premiered on Netflix on January 27, 2020.
Laverne Cox Net worth
The American actress has an estimated net worth of around $4 million as of 2021.