Emmy-winning actress and producer Laverne Cox is bursting with confidence today—but she struggled to believe in herself for years, until she found a sense of purpose through acting.
Cox, who is best known for her role on “Orange is the New Black,” became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Prime time Emmy acting award in 2014.
“I often get asked, how do I build confidence, how do I believe in myself?” Cox said in an interview with Know Your Value millennial contributor Daniela Pierre-Bravo. “And for many years, I did not believe in myself. I didn’t think that it was possible.”
But Cox’s longtime “passion” for the craft of acting and “the power of storytelling to change lives” inspired her to keep going. “The passion is what kept me training, going to auditions. So if you love something, you find a way to do it.”
Cox made the comments at Global Citizen Festival, an annual event featuring musicians and activists encouraging people to act to end extreme poverty by 2030. More than 60,000 people swarmed New York City’s Central Park to attend the 2019 event, and the group’s mission is to build a community of 100 million engaged citizens who tackle poverty-linked issues including the plight of girls and women around the globe, food and hunger, water and sanitation, health, education and more.
Pierre-Bravo asked Cox to share “tips you have for young women who want to have that passion and act on it, but still feel they’re being held back.”
“When I’m in my purpose, then even if I might not have the confidence, then I can allow the energy of a higher power, a greater energy, to enter me and work through me,” Cox said. “When we are of service, the universe takes care of all of it.”
Pierre-Bravo also asked Cox about National Coming Out Day on October 11, noting “so many people are still in the shadows, repressing who they are.”
“The fear—it’s often in our heads,” Cox said. “There’s always another layer of something I have to embrace abut myself. Most recently it’s been my age.”
She relayed a story about breaking her foot earlier this year and how she had to give her ID to her boyfriend to pick up medication for her. She asked him not to look at the age; he did look, though, and said Cox was as old as he figured she was.
“It was like, the anxiety was mine. No one else cared,” Cox said. “Sometimes people will care but really the shame we internalize about things is our own.”









