Laverne Cox Finally Admits Her Real Age

During her interview on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Laverne Cox revealed that she was preparing to celebrate quite an important birthday milestone. “So I am proudly 49, about to turn 50 and I’m so excited and happy to be able to own that,” Cox told host Ellen DeGeneres, People reported. Cox revealed that, after dating someone who believed her to be too old, she changed her age to simply “over 21” when she was really 28 years old at the time. For years, Cox gave a vague age range for herself — until her true age was displayed on her IMDb page. “So I was ‘over 21’ from 2002 to like 2019,” Cox told DeGeneres, per People. “And then IMDb figured out my real age, and then, so it started appearing places and it was freaking me out. I was having such anxiety.”

Cox decided to be up-front about her age after dissecting the reasons why she was feeling insecure about it with her therapist, that is. “I started unpacking these stories about being older,” Cox told DeGeneres, per People. “The stories were that I wasn’t hireable, I wasn’t datable, I wasn’t effable over a certain age –- apparently the age was like 27 [or] 28 — and then I worked through all that.” Cox first revealed her real age during a speaking engagement in Texas, and was surprised and relieved to realize that nobody really cared about her age except for herself.