__Laverne Cox is a Woman of the Year because... "Her unparalleled candor, courage, and eloquence have helped us understand a community that is far too often misunderstood. She teaches us that gender identity lives, first and foremost, in our hearts and minds." __
—Katie Couric, 1992 and 2006 Woman of the Year
HER WORDS TO LIVE BY: "There are lessons in everything. The bad, the good. Our job is to listen, and to continue to learn, so that maybe we get better at this. Maybe get better at life." —Laverne Cox, photographed in New York City. Escada dress. Fred Leighton earrings. Stuart Weitzman heels.
When Laverne Cox first heard that she had won the role of transgender inmate Sophia Burset in the Netflix original series Orange Is the New Black, she was running errands in New York City's East Village and had a little freak-out. "I'm on the street, just screaming and jumping up and down," Cox says, laughing. But Cox wasn't just experiencing an "I made it" career moment. In Sophia (who, while jailed, is at risk of losing both her family and her hormone therapy), Cox saw a character with the potential to educate the world; she saw, for the first time, a glimmer of herself. Up to this point, the actress says, "I played hookers a lot. That was the scope of what was available for trans actors. When I got the [OITNB] script, I was like, OK, this is what I've waited for my whole career—I need to kill it."
In fact, the moment was ripe. This year, with gay rights and marriage equality forging ahead at an unprecedented pace, the transgender community came out of the shadows, demanding to be respected and understood too. "I looked around at the lives of so many trans folks—lives that are often in danger," says Cox. "The homicide rate is disproportionately high among trans people. The rate of bullying is disproportionately high. Forty-one percent of all trans people have attempted suicide, compared to 4.6 percent of the rest of the population." *Forty-one percent.*The actress was primed to confront this inequality. Raised in inner-city Mobile, Alabama, by a single mother who worked multiple jobs to care for Laverne and her identical twin brother, Cox grew up "very feminine"; once, Cox's mom got a call from school warning her, "Your son is going to end up in New Orleans wearing a dress if we don't get him into therapy right away." While that didn't stop Cox from wearing makeup and women's clothing through high school, it wasn't until the would-be actress moved to New York City as an adult that the truth began to sink in: "It was a very painful process," she says now. "I had a nervous breakdown. My career was going nowhere; I shaved off my Beyoncé-circa-Destiny's Child long hair, bought boys' clothes, and tried to be 'normal.' I was so unhappy and thought, I either have to transition or I have to kill myself." She started hormone therapy and watched as her mother slowly but surely came around to the idea of having a daughter and calling her child by a different name (Laverne had been Cox's middle name). "It took a while," Cox says, "but living with myself was the only way I'd be happy."
And so this year, Cox has become the face of one of the biggest equality stories of 2014. "Laverne has an incredible ability to connect with others, including those for whom her message may be very new," says Piper Kerman, author of the memoir on which Orange Is the New Black is based. Cox's empathetic portrayal of Sophia has made her the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy—and landed her on the cover of Time magazine. She's met Barack Obama ("I thanked him for everything his administration has done for the trans community, which is a lot—more than any other president"). She's producing a documentary on CeCe McDonald, a transgender woman who, after defending herself from an attack, spent 19 months imprisoned for second-degree murder, and a documentary for MTV. And she's giving speeches nationwide too. "I always knew when I got a public platform, it was part of my job to educate people," Cox says. "Being famous to just wear lovely clothes—which I do love doing—that's not for me."
What is for Cox is a breed of advocacy that is rooted in human connection: "When we get to know people as people, then all the misconceptions that we might have about folks who are different from us get knocked away," she says. "And I think that's what's happening with this character. So much of the year I've had is historic, but this is a moment that is bigger than me. I meet people who say that my role has given them the courage to say, 'This is who I am,' and, 'I can transition and be successful and be out as a trans person,'" says Cox, who keeps a daily list of what she's grateful for. "We have this internal compass of the truth inside of us. And that is our job, really, to quiet all this noise around us and listen to that."
Alex Morris is a contributing editor at New York magazine.
