It’s also possible that Elliot’s example helped Izzard take the public step she had wanted to take for a while.
Excellent point, @Isiddiqui.
And… so what if she did? After Izzard isn’t coming out trans, she’s saying she’s genderfluid - and actually has been saying that for a long time.
I think there has been a different level of acceptance for a perceived man to wear “drag” on stage as part of entertaining people vs. being trans, genderfluid, or a transvestite when not on stage (and note those are three different ways of being a person, I’m not trying to conflate them).
As noted, society has a different level of acceptance these days.
In case it was unclear, I wasn’t challenging what’s obviously a personal decision on Izzard’s part. All of those choices (pronoun, name, and roles accepted) are hers and hers alone. I was asking purely out of curiosity.
Concur. Izzard has long been known for “cross-dressing” in performance, but that’s not that unusual for middle-aged male comedians, particularly British ones. What was unusual about Izzard’s case, even when she was routinely described and classified as a man, was the emphasis on the “cross-dressing” and its persistence in her private life as well.
There are still, of course, a lot of gender-rigid unambiguously male performers who routinely cross-dress as women for comedic purposes. Though I’m kind of hoping that the growing public acceptance of transgender, nonbinary, gender-fluid, etc. people will have something of a diluting effect on the weary old presumption that the mere sight of a male-presenting person dressing in conventionally “female” clothing, hairstyles, etc., is automatically funny.
For what it’s worth, Izzard is funny completely independently of what she’s wearing. I think I first encountered her comedy in audio-only format, and had no idea what was worn by the comedian I was hearing.
“Eddie” is a name that might be considered mildly gender-neutral (you’d assume an otherwise unspecified “Eddie” was male, but wouldn’t be too startled to find out she was female (an Edwina, for example) - certainly less startled than by a female “William” (for example)), so Eddie may choose to keep the name on that basis.
True, I didn’t mean to insinuate that Izzard in particular was trying to milk the “hee hee look a man in woman’s clothing” schtick.
Yes, as opposed to someone like Barry Humphries, who’s known mainly for comic performances as Dame Edna Everage, but who apparently has led a fairly conventional ‘cis male’ life offstage. (Australian rather than British, but same basic entertainment space.)
Izzard was on Bill Maher’s show–apparently in 2017, though I could swear it was more recently than that. (Google search turns up the 2017 show and a 2004 one for Izzard.) There was some awkwardness when Izzard talked about having ‘come out’ years ago—and Bill clearly thought this meant ‘gay’ and kept congratulating Izzard on being openly gay. The discussion never really expanded on the phrase.
Anyway, the variety of human experience does seem to escape some. Maher was trying to be supportive, I guess, but actually cut off the discussion somewhere short of clarity.
they are getting divorced . Split up last summer.
Who could’ve seen that coming?
We should all pretend to be shocked because there was absolutely no way to predict this.
In another story it said it was Elliot filing for divorce. I wonder if that is to try and spare Emma from being blamed for the breakup?
I’m in a Champions super-hero-genre table-top role-playing group. (Of course, we’re playing online, which is pretty common for TTRPGs these days.) We were chatting about some of our favorite super-hero shows and movies and this exchange happened:
A: Knowing that [Page] is a transmale is very distracting when watching [them] play a cis woman.
B: Well, Hollywood has been casting cis actors in trans roles for decades.
A: It’s just my feeling, not logic.
I didn’t say Elliott can’t play a straight character. I just said I find it distracting.
I thought Lavern Cox was a little too girlie to play Frankenfurter on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But it wouldn’t bother me in the least to see Page play a cis woman.
What with there being zero evidence and all.
I know I shouldn’t be petty but a little vindication feels good.
I pretty much assume any marriage between an actor and someone else is doomed to a short life. I know it’s not always true but Hollywood sure seems to have a high divorce rate. Maybe I’m just experiencing selection bias here.
Ellen was adorable in Juno and Inception; I hope Elliot is happy and fulfilled in his new life.
I don’t think so. I mentioned in another thread on an unrelated topic an interview I once heard on NPR of a indie director. He tangentially noted one of the reasons actors tended to have such difficulties with their love lives is how easy it was for them to access strong emotions. For better actors at least it is part of their job description - they have to be able to consistently and believably call up strong feeling to create a real-feeling scene. Further they have to do it over and over again.
It’s not a surprise that folks like that would have a natural tendency to fall into and out of love (or infatuation) at a higher rate than the general population. Especially when the acting profession also simultaneously selects for attractive, charismatic and often outgoing people. It’s hardly universal, but it’s the opposite of surprising when actor relationships fail.
An acting career can also involve a lot of going off for extended periods of time to shoot on location adding the issues with long distance relationship to the pot. And the place you are in, far from your spouse, is filled with other people who are also far from their loved ones and whom you are supposed to bond with, both on and off set.