Laverne Cox Trivia: 16 fun facts about the actress!

Laverne Cox is an American actress, reality television star, television producer, and LGBT advocate.

Let’s see some intriguing facts about her!

1. Laverne Cox was born in Mobile, Alabama, and has an identical twin brother, M Lamar, who portrays the pre-transitioning Sophia (as Marcus) in Orange Is the New Black.

2. Cox stated she attempted suicide at the age of 11, when she noticed that she had developed feelings about her male classmates and had been bullied for several years for not acting “the way someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act”.

3. She is a graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Alabama, where she studied creative writing before switching to dance.

4. 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.

5. 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).

6. Cox became known for 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.

7. She appeared as a contestant on the first season of I Want to Work for Diddy; afterward, she was approached by VH1 about show ideas.

8. 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.

9. She has also acted in a number of TV shows and films, including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Bored to Death, and Musical Chairs.

10. In addition to her work as an entertainer, she speaks and writes about transgender rights and other current affairs in a variety of media outlets, such as the Huffington Post.

11. Her role in Orange Is the New Black provides her a platform to speak on the rights of trans people.

12. She became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in the acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer/musician Angela Morley in 1990.

13. In 2015, she became the first openly transgender person to have a wax figure of herself at Madame Tussauds.

14. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on broadcast TV, Cameron Wirth on Doubt on CBS.

15. In 2017, Cox began her role as transgender attorney Cameron Wirth on Doubt on CBS.

16. In May 2016, Cox was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School in New York City for her progressive work in the fight for gender equality.