Karla Sofía Gascón’s revelatory performance in Emilia Pérez is history in the making.
Gascón stars as a Mexican cartel leader who hires an attorney (Zoe Saldaña) to fake their death to undergo gender-affirming surgery in the 2024 musical, quickly earning Gascón acting nominations at multiple awards shows. For both the 2025 Golden Globes and Academy Awards, Gascón became the first openly transgender individual to score nods.
“I have a message for you: The light always wins over darkness,” she said in the Golden Globe acceptance speech for Best Film, Musical or Comedy in January 2025. “I have a lot of things to say to you because you can, maybe, put us in jail, you can beat us up, but you never can take away our soul, our existence [and] our identity. I want to say to you: Raise your voice, freedom and say, ‘I am who I am, not what you want.’”
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Weeks later, she was nominated for Actress in a Leading Role at the Oscars.
‘Emilia Perez’ Takes Home the Most Movie Wins at 2025 Golden Globes
“Thank you so much @theacademy,” Gascón wrote via Instagram. “NAM MYOHO RENGE KYO. (The Japanese phrase is a Buddhist chant, which translates to, “Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra.”)
Keep scrolling to get to know Gascón ahead of the 2025 Oscars:
What Else Has Karla Sofia Gascon Acted In?
Gascón has been acting since 1995, getting her start in telenovelas before she transitioned. Her credits also include Flour, Rebel, Prelude, Drunk History, The Lord of the Skies and more.
Karla Sofia Gascon Is Married
Gascón met now-wife Marisa Gutiérrez when they were teenagers in a Spanish nightclub and they wed in their mid-20s. They welcomed a daughter, Victoria, in 2011.
“[Marisa has] always known who I am, but turned to stone when she saw me as a woman,” Gascón recalled to Spanish newspaper El Mundo in 2024.
Karla Sofia Gascon Has Been Candid About Her Transition
Gascón transitioned in 2018 with the full support of her wife and daughter. She publicly came out when she was 46.
“There was a time in my life when I thought I would never work in film or television again and I didn’t know how I would get ahead,” she recalled to Them in November 2024. “I was on the verge of taking my own life.”
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Karla Sofia Gascon Initially Had Hesitations About ‘Emilia Perez’
Gascón was initially wary about signing onto Emilia Pérez because of the musical component.
“I thought, ‘Well, this can’t be possible,’” Gascón told Vogue in November 2024. “I thought it’d be one of those things that they call me for just to be weird but will never go ahead. And I hated musicals — they’re what I least wanted to work on.”
Playing both Emilia and the masculine Manitas made Gascón feel “as if Beauty and the Beast were both locked in the same body.”
“All humans have darkness and light, and the movie is about that transition from one to the other,” the actress told the magazine. “Through this film, I realized that men have more freedom physically but are more constrained mentally. And women have more physical limitations but are much more mentally free.”
A Guide to Karla Sofia Gascon’s ‘Emilia Perez’ Accolades
When Emilia premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Gascón earned the coveted Best Actress Award alongside costars Saldaña and Selena Gomez. All three women were up for Golden Globes in 2025 with Gascón in the Leading Actress category while the latter two stayed in Supporting. (Saldaña won her category, while Gascón did not.)
Gascón was also nominated for Actress in a Leading Role at the 2025 Oscars.
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