Women We Love: Lana Wachowski

For the first 37 years of her life, Lana Wachowski lived as Larry, carving out a successful film career with his brother, Andy. Together, the pair wrote and directed The Matrix trilogy, and although highly successful, insisted on no-press clauses in their contracts.

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But it was while shooting the second two films in Australia that Larry realised he could no longer live a lie, finally admitting to his family that he was transgendered. “I'm a girl,” he told them, and from then on began living as Lana.

While it had long been rumoured that Larry had undergone a sex change, it wasn’t until the Wachowskis set forth on a promotional tour for their latest venture, Cloud Atlas, that Lana came out to the wider public.

“I did feel some responsibility to the GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] people, and some people had been asking me to be more public,” she has said in interviews. “It was a big decision and it took a long time.”
Having been previously married while she was living as Larry, in 2009, Lana married her current wife, whose identity remains private.