Juno actress Ellen Page has said that transgender actress Laverne Cox gave her the courage to come out.
Page presented the Orange Is The New Black star with the Stephen F Kolzak Award at the GLAAD Awards over the weekend in Los Angeles, saying: ‘Many of you know that I officially came out on Valentine's Day. One of the best things about it was the way it enabled me to publicly show support for the people who inspire me and give me courage.’
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Cox then made a speech of her own after receiving the award: ‘I’m an African-American transgender woman from a working-class background, raised by a single mother,’ she said. ‘We are not programmed to think we should receive these kind of awards, but I’d like to think that things are changing.’
Cox received an award in 2009 after appearing in I Want To Work For Diddy on VH1 and is currently producing a documentary called Free CeCe about transgender activist Chrishaun Reed “CeCe” McDonald, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2012 for stabbing to death a man who attacked her and her friends in Minneapolis.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.