Hari Nef is a 24-year-old American actor, model and activist, and is the first transgender model to be signed to a major modelling agency (IMG), and the first to land a glossy British cover (Elle).

“I was not the right girl. I was the lucky one in the right place at the right time. But people have been blazing this path for me for more than 50 years,” she says. She describes herself, and her peers, as the new generation – “because when we talk about previous generations, we’re referring to people only five or 10 years ago”.

Nef is not the first trans model (Barneys’ SS14 campaign cast 17 transgender models, and Andreja Pejić transitioned mid-career) but her signing has marked a cultural shift in trans-visibility. In 2014, when Nef was still in college, Laverne Cox became the first trans actor to be nominated for an Emmy for Orange is the New Black; the following year, Caitlyn Jenner came out.

After graduating from Columbia, Nef received two calls: one from modelling agency IMG, and one from the makers of Amazon Prime drama, Transparent, offering her a role. She accepted both jobs and promptly quit her off-Broadway play.

In Transparent, Nef plays Gittel, a transgender woman in Berlin during the Weimar-era when sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexual”. Her casting was an act of “transfirmative action”, a programme that aims to use as many transgender crew members as possible, but her impressive performance squashed any sense that she might not have otherwise been cast. Nef was rejected by three agencies before signing to IMG, a galling period during her college years when she also hosted club nights and performed in a drag act (they disbanded around the same time that she started taking “the ’mones’” – or hormones). She had already modelled for Selfridges’ unisex brand but, since signing to IMG, has walked in NY fashion week, modelled for Hood by Air, been profiled in Vogue and is now the face of eyewear company Luxottica. Its class of 2016 campaign, which has her wearing glasses for the first time, is a twist on the traditional American high-school yearbook.

“It was accidental, being an activist,” she says. “But I am outspoken. I am not passive [about] the injustice that I’ve seen.” Even so, she says, she still lets a lot of things slide. “Look. I could write a tweet that would send loads of negative media attention towards the brand who cancelled a model after finding out about her gender. I could talk about people in the industry who have said gross things. I could create a second of radical positive change. But eventually that witch-hunting might jeopardise my role.” While she won’t speculate over a singular “transmoment” when trans rights became a mainstream priority, she thinks the link between social media and progress was pivotal: “For me, Instagram had become a place where I could image myself the way I found myself. Visibility is not in itself always a good thing, but when it is in the hands of those who need positive visibility, it can be.”

To some extent, Nef has berated the industry, the system – and herself – with wit but still gets “flak for not being outspoken enough”. She thinks the emphasis on gender is at risk of turning the trans community into “a freak show”. The situation is, she says, “a liberal wankfest ... on my Wikipedia page, one of the first things is my identity. I hate that. It’s not irrelevant, I know some of my exposure has been due to my identity, but I believe in more than that. I think that often my work is obscured by my gender identity. I don’t want it to be a big deal. This is not what I want to talk about anymore. Identity is a dead end. It’s a snoozefest.”

For all that she hates discussing identity politics, her take is still pertinent to the bigger debate. “My identity will always inform my experience and shape my perception. But I am an unremarkable person. The more we fixate on it the less we, as a community, [will] feel normal and safe in our day-to-day lives. I just want to grab a meal and, you know, go on a date.”