The Dallas Buyers Club, Amanda, Hit and Miss. What do all of these have in common? Despite the fact that the first two are movies and the third is a show, that is. They all have transgender characters played by cis actors.
I’m sure that doesn’t seem like a big deal to a lot of people. Jared Leto won an award for playing a trans woman and it is only now becoming okay to have trans characters in the media. But it shows a problem within the movie/TV industries: they still aren’t willing to hire trans actors. I’ve heard people say that there just aren’t any trans actors who wanted to play those roles. I highly doubt that. Have trans people portrayed in the media normalizes trans people. That is a good thing. They could have found trans actors, but I doubt they actually looked.
I want to see trans actors playing trans characters.
What other movies/shows have these same problems?
hessianwithteeth 
July 6th, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Love this post! Yet, I wonder how much this ONLY applies to Hollywood. Are trans actors the only ones being treated differently? I know there are “laws” against discrimination, but sometimes they just don’t foolproof every aspect of the world. 😦
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July 10th, 2014 at 8:38 am
I doubt it. I know that they will often turn people way for not being white. It’s unfortunate that such discrimination exists.
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July 10th, 2014 at 1:12 pm
It seriously is! I know that certain stories would not seem to “mesh” if the actors have certain characteristics (example a movie based on Scotland would normally need actors with Scottish accents, etc.) but that does not mean there is no place for different groups of people in Hollywood! There are trans characters, characters of different languages, those of different races, etc. all the time in movies. People just don’t use their brains…
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July 11th, 2014 at 12:04 am
Pretty much.
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July 4th, 2014 at 8:48 pm
I totally agree. The reason there’s a supposed scarcity of trans actors is because they’re not given enough opportunities.
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