Hollywood Stopped Calling: Trans Actors Face a Roles Wipeout

Zero. That's how many transgender characters appeared in the 225 movies released by Hollywood's 10 major distributors and analyzed by Glaad's annual Where We Are in Film report, published in July. The LGBTQ+ advocacy organization called the result "unconscionable." The TV numbers, released this week, are worse.

The companion Where We Are on TV study — covering scripted broadcast, cable and streaming from 1 June 2025 to 31 May 2026 — counted just seven trans characters among 369 LGBTQ+ characters tracked, a 79% drop from the 33 counted last year. It's the steepest decline since the record high of 42 trans characters in the 2021-22 season. Two of the seven were played by cisgender men. And because three of the characters sat on cancelled shows and four on limited series, none will return next year. Regular or recurring trans characters on television: effectively none.

What happened to the actors?

Trace Lysette is the case study. At the start of 2024 she had an Independent Spirit Award nomination for best lead performance for the title role in Monica, sharing a category with Natalie Portman, Jessica Chastain and Jeffrey Wright. She and costar Patricia Clarkson had the cover of Variety, a spot on The Kelly Clarkson Show and a part in NBC's Quantum Leap revival. Then the phone went quiet.

"I thought for sure I would have gotten some offers for a series regular on a TV show, which would have helped me finally buy a house," Lysette, who is trans, told the Guardian. "But it didn't come." She calls the drought that followed "a full-on ego death." She estimates she auditioned for about seven parts in 2026 — and nothing since the end of spring. She hasn't had a lead role or major studio project since Monica, despite earlier supporting turns in Transparent and the Jennifer Lopez hit Hustlers.

Vico Ortiz, the transmasculine, non-binary and genderqueer actor who played the pirate Jim Jimenez in HBO Max's Our Flag Means Death, has watched the same pattern. "We all used to be booked and busy, and then it was like: 'Oh shit, we're all getting dropped like flies,'" they said, noting the only big-budget roles they've auditioned for in two years were for white cisgender femme-leaning "lesbian light" women — Ortiz is Puerto Rican.

The list runs upward. In late September, Jack Haven — star of Netflix's Atypical and the 2026 Cannes queer darling Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma — posted a public YouTube plea for $4,000 of work to qualify for Sag-Aftra health insurance. Lysette responded on X that she lost her own union health insurance two years ago. Elliot Page, Oscar- and Bafta-nominated and fresh off Christopher Nolan's smash The Odyssey, admitted on the podcast On Film … With Kevin McCarthy that no, Hollywood wasn't beating down his door — adding, half joking: "If someone wants to call me …" Emmy winner Laverne Cox told the Guardian she'd lost roughly 90% of her income in two years. Billions star Asia Kate Dillon, non-binary, wrote last month that they were looking for service work.

Wasn't there progress just recently?

Three years ago, yes. The summer of 2022 delivered a trio of films where transness simply wasn't the point: Zoe Terakes as the bully Haley in A24's horror hit Talk to Me; Hari Nef as a doctor Barbie in Greta Gerwig's behemoth, her transness never factoring in; Aneesh Sheth as the bodyguard Amy in Amazon's Red, White and Royal Blue, a character written as trans in Casey McQuiston's novel but never mentioned as such on screen. As the Guardian reported at the time, these characters felt remarkable because their transness was not.

Now the pendulum has swung back hard. The industry has produced fewer shows since the 2022 streaming bust and the 2023 actors' and writers' strikes, but that alone can't explain a collapse this severe.

"About 10 years ago, you could feel that progress was starting, and then for it to just halt is very disheartening," said Raina Deerwater, Glaad's associate director of entertainment research and analysis and lead author of the study. "There's a complete absence in a way that there hasn't been in a long time, and it's scary." Deerwater notes the plummet arrives as politicians and anti-LGBTQ+ activists push misinformation and laws targeting trans rights: "Trans folks are being scapegoated, and now they can't even turn off the news and turn on whatever TV they watch for fun to get a trans story."

Whose decision is it?

Many in the industry point to a kneejerk reaction to anti-trans rhetoric. "This administration has enabled people's implicit bias — it's been OKed by the masses," says Lysette, who notes that trans actors who once competed for both trans and cis roles now have little chance at either. Rebecca Root, the British trans actor who led the BBC Two sitcom Boy Meets Girl in 2015 and appeared in The Queen's Gambit and Heartstopper, blames studio timidity: "The studios think: 'Well, the audiences don't want to see trans things, so we won't make trans storylines.'" Fear of cancel culture, she says, leaves decision-makers paralyzed: "So they just say: 'Well, we'd better not upset anybody.'"

Glaad's senior director of entertainment research and analysis, Megan Townsend, frames the retreat as bad business: "Gen Z represents the largest share of moviegoers in North America," she said, citing Gallup data that more than one in five Americans under 30 — 23% — identify as LGBTQ. "If studios want to stay relevant with younger audiences and bring in box office dollars, they can't afford to ignore nearly one-quarter of their most enthusiastic ticket buyers."

Is there a way back?

Some. Recent standout performances arrived after the studies' cutoff: Josie Totah in Amazon's new Carrie series; Yenesi in La Bola Negra; Miss Benny, Alaska Riley and Saturn Risin9 in Club Kid. Later this month, Euphoria's Hunter Schafer leads Amazon Prime's mega-budget Blade Runner series.

Root, kept afloat by The Queen's Gambit writer-director Scott Frank tapping her for two more roles, trusts history: "We've been here before, and we've got out of it before. We will come through again." Ortiz, hustling through indie projects, audiobooks and voice work, puts it more bluntly: "I've used this time to have a breakup with the industry, in a way." And: "We're never going to be silenced. We're going to find our spotlight. Whether you all like it or not."