‘Emilia Pérez’ Star Karla Sofía Gascón Becomes First Openly Trans Actor Nominated for an Oscar

Karla Sofía Gascón has become the first openly transgender actor to be nominated for an Academy Award. The Spanish star is recognized for her performance in the titular role of Jacques Audiard’s musical crime film “Emilia Pérez.”

The Netflix film follows Emilia (Gascón), a feared drug lord who seeks the help of a lawyer, Rita (Zoe Saldaña), to fake her death and undergo gender-affirming surgery. Variety‘s chief film critic Peter Debruge praised the Spanish-language film in his review, writing that Gascón “electrifies” in her role.

This isn’t Gascón’s first history-making nod this awards season: She became the first transgender woman to win the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival (an honor which she shared with her co-stars Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz) and was the first trans woman nominated for film acting at the Golden Globes.

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Only three openly trans people have been nominated in any categories at the Oscars before: composer Angela Morley, musician Anohni and documentarian Yance Ford. Elliot Page was nominated for his work on “Juno” in 2007 before coming out as a transgender man in 2020.

The Oscars have also awarded cisgender actors for portraying transgender characters on previous occasions, including Jared Leto for “Dallas Buyers Club” and Hilary Swank for “Boys Don’t Cry.” Eddie Redmayne also earned a nod for “The Danish Girl.”

Prior to starring in “Emilia Pérez,” Gascón was best known as a star of telenovelas, most notably Telemundo’s International Emmy-winning “El Señor de los Cielos” and the Netflix Mexican teen drama “Rebelde.” In film, Gascón starred in Gaz Alazraki’s 2013 dark comedy “Nosotros los Nobles” for Warner Bros.