10 Things To Know About Trans Actress Karla Sofía Gascón, Who Could Make Oscar History

If nominated, the Spanish actress would make history as the first openly trans actress to land an Oscar acting nod…

Spanish actress Karla Sofía Gascón made history in the spring when she became the first transgender woman to win Best Actress at the annual Cannes Film Festival in May for her role in Jacques Audiard’s genre-blending queer crime musical Emilia Pérez. The 52-year-old Gascón, who was working alongside co-stars Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez, has been the recipient of critical acclaim since the film debuted for her role as a Mexican drug lord who comes out as a transgender woman and decides to transition, and she has been picking up serious Oscar buzz ever since.

With Cannes over, the spotlight now turns to the Academy Awards. While the possibility of making history with an Academy Award nomination of course excites Gascón, she has emphasized that it is ultimately beyond her control. Speaking at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain in September, Gascón addressed the Oscar buzz, especially as she is being submitted for Lead Actress consideration. If nominated, she would make history as the first openly trans actress to receive an Academy Award nod.

(Though Gascón would be the first openly trans actress recognized by the Oscars if nominated, the first openly trans performer to receive any nomination was the singer Anohni, who was up for best song in 2016 but boycotted the ceremony. Elliot Page, who was nominated for the 2007 film Juno, came out publicly as trans in 2020.)

“You can do whatever you want to win, but if you’re not going to win, you won’t,” Gascón stated. “I can’t do more than present my work. If it happens, it would be wonderful for me as an actress.”

Gascón stressed the importance of being recognized for her talent, not her identity. “Sometimes, people think you’re given a prize because of your community, not your role. That annoys me,” she admitted.

She also highlighted her dedication to the craft, saying, “I’ve done a role very few people could have done,” adding that her focus remains on her performance. While recognizing the significance of her identity, Gascón concluded, “The only thing I can do is act. I want the focus to be on that as well.”

The 97th annual Academy Awards will be held on March 2, 2025, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, and the nominations for the star-studded bash are scheduled to come out on January 17, 2025. While we wait to see if Gascón will score the coveted nomination, here are 10 things you should know about the actress.

1. Gascón was born on March 31, 1972, in Alcobendas, Spain, a small town near Madrid. She was raised in a working-class family but felt destined for stardom. “At 16 years old, I woke up one day knowing what I had to do – don’t ask me how,” Gascón told The New York Times recently. She used her mother’s old rotary phone to call Televisión Española to inform the broadcaster that she wanted to appear onscreen. Gascón’s ambition far outstripped her opportunities – the only jobs available then were background-player gigs – but she took everything she could find and kept at it, eventually working her way up to commercials and minor TV shows.
   
2. She is Spanish by birth but says she feels Mexican by adoption, since she has lived and worked for many years in that country in films and novelas. Director Julián Pastor encouraged Gascón to move to Mexico, where she was cast in projects that required horse-riding and sword fighting. “It was full of action and adventure, exactly what I was looking for,” she said.
   
3. Gascón slowly became a veteran of Mexican telenovelas, and starred in the 2013 dark comedy film hit Nosotros los Nobles (also called The Noble Family and We Are the Nobles), which was directed by famed Mexican director, screenwriter and producer Gary Alazraki. 
   
4. By her mid-40s, with several career successes under her belt, Gascón still had not yet begun to live openly as a woman, and the years spent in secret had taken their toll. “There were some very painful moments,” she said. “I even thought of taking my own life at some points.” With the support of her family, she made the decision to pursue gender-affirming surgery.
   
5. Gascón transitioned six years ago while in the public eye. “It was very difficult,” she said. “People knew me a certain way and then I changed, so I constantly felt that I had to justify myself. I was always fighting with everyone.” To have her identity and transition dissected in editorials and on talk shows was a constant struggle. “When you go through those moments, you have the impression that the whole world is against you,” she said. “Some of the criticism is people saying, ‘What you did to yourself is going against your nature.’ I want to tell them, look at yourself in the mirror! If you’re that natural, take off your clothes, go hunt for rabbits in the wild, and let your nails grow. Let’s see how nature will suit you then!” Still, Gascón made the decision knowing it could cost her everything in the career she had worked so hard for. “When I finished my transition, I didn’t know if I was going to have a career after that,” she said.
   
6. Of her wife, Marisa, whom Gascón has been with since they met in a nightclub as teenagers in Spain, Gascón said: “We’ve obviously shared a big chunk of our lives together, but I’ve never deceived her about who I was.” Together they have a teenage daughter.
   
7. After transitioning, a diverse creative portfolio helped Gascón get by – she has written two books and competed on a celebrity edition of MasterChef in Mexico – and an eight-episode role in the Mexican telenovela Rebelde(2022) served to re-establish her as a performer.
   
8. When the audition for Emilia Pérez came her way, Gascón nearly passed, fearing the musical elements were out of her reach. Still, she put herself on tape and earned a flight to Paris to meet Audiard, who said they formed an instant connection. “The minute I saw her, that was it,” he explained, praising Gascón’s sense of authority and playfulness: “That’s what you call presence.”
   
9. Before filming Emilia Pérez, Gascón shared her own life experiences with Audiard (A Prophet, Rust & Bone, Dheepan and Sisters Brothers), who began to tailor the titular role to his star. Once production began, Gascón burrowed so deeply into character that she wondered whether Emilia would ever be possible to shake.“To remove this character, it’s almost like I had to do an exorcism,” she said.
   
10. There has been controversy surrounding Gascón’s role in Emilia Pérez and for her Cannes Best Actress win, which she has handled with grace. During her Cannes acceptance speech in May, she predicted, “Tomorrow, there will be plenty of comments from terrible people saying the same things about all of us trans people.” Indeed, the morning after, the French politician Marion Maréchal posted on X a comment that translated to: “So a man has won best actress.” Gascón filed a legal complaint about the insult and posted her own colourful rejoinder on X a few days later: “No matter how much you bark, you gargoyles of Beelzebub,” Gascón wrote, “you will not be able to blur what I have achieved.”

Jacques Audiard’s film Emilia Pérez – starring Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramírez and Mark Ivanir – premieres in select theaters on November 1, and debuts on Netflix on November 13, 2024.