Chloë Sevigny has played queer roles several times and she will name them all for you if you ask her. Blackbook magazine started her off by mentioning “Candy Darling, Boys Don’t Cry“:
“Party Monster, If These Walls Could Talk 2,” Chloë said, finishing the reporter’s sentence. “I hope that I have enough gay stripes that I won’t get totally attacked.”
Gay stripes, she has, but why would she be attacked? The actress is discussing her new role in an upcoming mini-series from some originators of Skins. She’ll be playing “a pre-op male-to-female tranny assassin.”
“It was the creators’ idea not to hire a boy to play the part, and of course as an actor you’re going to jump on that,” Chloë told the magazine. “I’m going to try to play it as beautiful and as feminine and as glamorous as I can – not like Transamerica.”
She’s been working on an Irish accent for the role and describes the miniseries as “realistic” and “edgy.”
Chloë is likely not to get attacked, as she worries, but she’s probably seen firsthand how media images about transgender and queer individuals aren’t always dealt with in the best ways. Having been part of controversial films like Boys Don’t Cry and also the off-Broadway play Hazelwood Jr. High, based on a real life lesbian related murder of a teen girl, Chloë seems attracted to roles that draw as much criticism as they do praise or awards. And that is one reason why we love her – and why she keeps getting cast in these outsider roles.
It should be no surprise, then, that her other upcoming role is as the legendary rumored lesbian murder Lizzie Borden in an HBO biopic. That’s our Chloë!
