Laverne Cox, 49, was a guest on The Ellen Show to promote Inventing Anna, the Shonda Rhimes Netflix series dramatizing the Anna Delvey case. Laverne went to Paris Fashion Week for the first time this year as a guest of Schiaparelli, Vauthier and Gaultier, which she loved. She admitted it was a little scary for her to be on a show with a live studio audience (they wear masks and require both proof of vaccination and a negative PCR test) because she’s so careful about going out. That made me like her more than I already do. Then Laverne admitted she’s turning 50 in May. I never noticed this, but she was cagey about her age earlier in her career and only admitted her real age in 2019! IMDB published it first though. Here’s what she told Ellen.
My birthday is May 29th. I will be turning 50 years old. I started [air quotes] lying/being elusive about my age in 2000. I was 28 and I was dating a guy who was 21. He broke up with me because he said I was too old. I was like ‘if I’m too old I’ll just be 22.’ For the next two years on my dating apps and online I was 22 everywhere. Then I didn’t feel comfortable lying so ‘over 21’ became my age.
I was ‘over 21’ from 2002 to 2019. Then IMDB figured out my real age and it started appearing places. It was freaking me out and I was having such anxiety. I started talking to my therapist about it and unpacking all the stories I had about being older. ‘I wasn’t hireable,’ ‘I wasn’t datable,’ ‘I wasn’t F-able’ over a certain age. Apparently the age was like 27. Then I worked through all that. The first time I said my age out loud was January 2019. It was nothing. It was a reminder that in our heads we might have shame about something, and no one really cares, it’s just all in our heads. To be real, I am a black actress over 40 in Hollywood, so lying about my age is not completely insane.
That last thing she said about how we have shame over things that other people don’t care about really hit home for me! I have body dysmorphia and put a lot of pressure on myself to be a certain weight and size. I need to work with a professional on that mindset instead of just trying to get back to a number on the scale.
As for the issue of her age, many actresses are cagey about their ages and that’s understandable. This reminds me of when Octavia Spencer admitted early in lockdown that she’s really 50, not 48 as she claimed! That was hilarious. There’s something about turning 50 that makes us realize that we’ve still got it and we don’t GAF if society considers us unf-kable or unwanted. I’m not quite there yet mentally or age-wise, but I’m close.
Laverne also gushed about her boyfriend saying their relationship is “magical, it’s amazing, it’s incredible to be in love. Any day that we’re together it’s incredible.” That’s so sweet!
Photos credit: Avalon.red, Nicole Rivelli/Netflix and via Instagram
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZmcG1ka4Vxe8uarZ6qnpqspLvXmJidpZmpwKC%2Fx56WrKCRq7Klq9iemKurj6Szp6vHnqmYmZearKat0aWgnqqPnrugtMSrlpyZopqys3s%3D