On Thursday, Karla Sofía Gascón became the first openly trans actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for her starring role in Emilia Pérez. Regardless of whether or not Karla takes an Oscar home on March 2, 2025, history has been made. To have a trans actress recognized for her talent marks an important step forward in terms of inclusion, representation, and visibility for transgender actors and their stories.
More from MamásLatinas: Everything you need to know about the movie ‘Emilia Pérez’
No one person should ever have to kick down doors, hold those doors open so others can come through, educate the ignorant, and represent an entire community favorably and with dignity. But when you are the first to break down a societal barrier, you often get put in that position. And that’s the position that Karla seems to find herself in at the moment.
“The other day, this woman came up to me and was telling me how wonderful my work was,” she told USA Today in November 2024. “Then she asked me, ‘If you get nominated, will you be nominated for best actress or best actor?’ And I told her, ‘Ma’am, I am an actress! If I played a monster or an old dog, I would still be nominated as an actress!’” That right there is unpaid education labor. I, for one, am grateful to Karla for her work on and off screen.
Learn more about Karla Sofía Gascón’s journey below.
She is Spanish.
Born on March 31, 1972, she was raised as part of a working-class family in Alcobendas, Spain, near Madrid. She caught the acting bug at a relatively young age, and did what she could to find opportunities to be on camera.
“At 16 years old, I woke up one day knowing what I had to do—don’t ask me how,” Karla shared in a 2024 interview with the New York Times. At the time, she used her mom’s landline—remember those?—to call Televisión Española and offer her services as on-screen talent.
She also dropped off headshots at a casting agency and got work as background talent. Her roles included “Applauding, brandishing a spear, saying ‘good afternoon,’ whatever it is an extra does,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
She moved to Mexico in 2009.
Encouraged by director Julián Pastor, she moved to Mexico to pursue more acting opportunities. It was a good move as she lent her talents to multiple Mexican telenovelas including Llena de Amor, El Señor de los Cielos, Hasta el Fin del Mundo, and Corazón Salvaje. Prior to coming out as a trans woman, she was credited as either Carlos Gascón or Juan Carlos Gascón.
She loves Mexico.
“I adore Mexico, I have many friends there through Mexican residence and look, the first time I arrived, it was with Julián Pastor, a director from the golden age of Mexican cinema,” she said in a Golden Globes interview. The first thing I did was with Televisa, the production Corazón Salvaje, a wonderful character alongside Angelique Boyer and Sebastián Zurita. That has been one of the most beautiful things in my career.”
She is married.
Karla met her wife Marisa Gutiérrez at a nightclub in Spain when they were both teenagers. They got married when they were in their mid-20s. “I’ve never deceived her about who I was,” Karla has shared. They welcomed a daughter, Victoria, in 2011.
She came out as trans in 2016.
“I’ve known since the age of 4,” says Karla told The Hollywood Reporter. “I would see other girls and say, ‘I want to be like that.’ Or I saw a girl on television and identified more with that character.”
She has been honest about having extramarital relationships.
According to THR, while Karla was living and working in Mexico—without her wife and daughter who remained in Spain—she had an affair with a female Mexican senator. She told the senator that she wanted to live as a woman and was under the impression that the senator would support her transition.
“The person I was with told me she would help me, and it wasn’t so,” Karla told THR. “She told me she would be with me forever, and it wasn’t so.” She was so devastated that she considered ending her life. Instead, she channeled her pain into a book.
In 2018, Karla published ‘Karsia: An Extraordinary Story.’
The book is described by THR as: “a magical realist memoir in which the narrator, hanging from a belt in a loft apartment, relives her own life, her childhood, her dysphoria, her brother’s death, her lover’s betrayal.” The book served not only as a way to process her pain, but also as a way to share with the public that she was now Karla Sofía Gascón.
Her gender-affirming surgery happened in Spain.
Her transition was made possible and paid for by Spanish governmental health care. She underwent gender-affirming surgery with the full support of her wife and daughter.
Naturally, she worried about how her transition would affect her professionally. “When I finished my transition, I didn’t know if I was going to have a career after that,” she told the NYT in 2024.
“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.”
In 2022, she competed on a reality show.
A few years after her gender-affirming surgery, she competed on Master Chef Celebrity Mexico and came in fifth place. That same year, she played Lourdes Buendia—her first credited role as Karla Sofía—in the teen series Rebelde.
Then came the role of a lifetime.
“The minute I saw her, that was it,” the director of Emilia Pérez, Jacques Audiard, told the NYT. This was after spending years trying to find just the right person to cast in the titular role.
“I was looking for actresses in Los Angeles and a good amount in Mexico,” the director told THR. “And they were wonderful, but it just wasn’t working.” He was so taken by Karla and the stories that she shared about her own life, that he reworked the part just for her.
She’s making history.
At the 77th Cannes Film Festival Awards, the best actress award was presented to the four leading and supporting actresses of Emilía Perez: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz. This made Karla the first openly trans woman to receive the award. It is not, however, the first time that the award has been shared by multiple actresses.
Karla is also the first openly trans actress to be nominated for an Oscar.
There have been three other trans Oscar nominees before: composer Angela Morely, singer Anohni, and documentarian Yance Ford. In addition, Elliot Page was nominated for an Oscar for his role in Juno, prior to coming out as transgender in 2020.
Regardless of whether Karla takes home an Oscar for her role in Emilia Peréz or not, her nomination is already a big win for her role in real life. Brava!
