“Inventing Anna” actress Laverne Cox appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” where she spoke about approaching 50.
Cox will turn 50 in May, but the actress revealed that she hid her age for years.
“I was 28 years old and I was dating a guy that was 21 and he broke up with me because he said I was too old,” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, if I’m too old, I’ll just be 22’.”
Cox says she did not feel good about lying about her age, so she kept it vague instead of throwing out a number.
“So I was ‘over 21’ from 2002 to like 2019. And then IMDb figured out my real age, and then, so it started appearing places and it was freaking me out. I was having such anxiety.”
“I started unpacking these stories about being older. The stories were that I wasn’t hireable, I wasn’t datable, I wasn’t effable over a certain age – apparently, the age was like 27 [or] 28 — and then I worked through all that.”
Cox first revealed her age publicly at a speaking engagement back in January: “I thought the sky was going to fall, and then people were just like … it was like nothing,” she said. “It was a reminder that, in our heads, we might have shame about something and it’s, like, terrible and awful … and no one really cares. It’s all in our heads. So I am proudly 49, about to turn 50 and I’m so excited and happy to be able to own that.”
Cox can currently be seen starring as celebrity fitness trainer Kacy Duke, in the Shonda Rhimes-created Netflix series, “Inventing Anna.” The series is based on controversial social media influencer Anna Delvey, who allegedly scammed her way to the top.
