Laverne Cox photographed by Casey Spooner and styled by Akeem Smith for V magazine.
Emmy-nominated actress and trans activist Laverne Cox is featured in the Fall issue of V magazine. For its annual "Rebels" issue, V commissioned celebrities and artists to nominate who they saw as their personal rebels.
Cox, who in May became the first transgender person to appear on the cover of Time, speaks candidly to writer William Defebaugh about breaking barriers and finding her own personal truth: "A lot of my life has been about me charting my own space for myself, creating a space for myself to survive," she says. "Now I'm trying to reframe my experiences. I'm not just in survival mode anymore. I'm in a space where I can thrive."
Cox also opens up about bringing a piece of herself into her character Sophia:
"I think that before Sophia, for the most part, representations of trans folks were comic relief. We've been victims, we've been mostly talked about in terms of our transition and being trans, but in a lot of ways Sophia gets to be just another woman in Litchfield, with a different experience and a different story."
Cox was nominated by her Orange Is The New Black co-star Natasha Lyonne as her personal rebel because of the adversity she has overcome and the boundaries she continues to break. As Lyonne explains:
"Laverne stands up for what she believes in and does so with grace and humility. She is one of a kind: a game changer and a maverick who not only expands closed minds but educates them. She is the living embodiment of what she believes in, and the inevitable fallout of that is she inspires others to tell their own truths."
Word!
Read the full story in the Fall Issue of V magazine (Issue 91), available September 10 on newsstands and Vmagazine.com.
