By Sal Montemurro, Webmaster & Staff Writer
Laverne Cox (born May 29, 1972) is an LGBTQ+ advocate and American actress. She rose to popularity through her role as Sophia Burset on Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black (premiered in 2013), in doing so she became the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category.
And she was the first trans individual to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. She won a Daytime Emmy Award in 2015 for her Outstanding Special Class Special as an executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, this then making her the first transgender woman to win the award. Then in 2017, with her character Cameron Wirth on U.S. broadcast TV on CBS’s Doubt, she became the first trans person to play a transgender series regular.
Cox also was a contestant on the first season of VH1’s reality show I Want to Work for Diddy, and later she co-hosted and co-produced the VH1 makeover television series TRANSform Me.
During April 2014, Cox was recognized by GLAAD with its Stephen F. Kolzak Award for her advocate work for the transgender community. In June 2014, Time magazine put her on the cover, making her the first transgender person to appear on said cover. Cox is the first trans person to be on the cover of a Cosmopolitan magazine, February 2018. She’s also the first openly transgender individual to have her own a wax figure at Madame Tussauds.
