When Tangerine premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year, an indie darling shot on an iPhone 5 about the hustles of two transgender sex workers in Hollywood, its breakout star Mya Taylor had a decision to make: Should she share that she, also a trans woman, had drawn on her own real-life experience as a sex worker to play the role of Alexandra? "I felt like all the attention was going to be, ’Oh, she was a prostitute. Maybe she fucked to get this role,’" Taylor says. "I wanted people to see the work."

Taylor decided to be transparent. "You know how some people will hide their past and they’re all closeted about everything?" she asks me by phone, with a hint of her native Texan drawl. "Well, I’m not that bitch." Sex work is a reality in the trans community, she thought, and she was tired of it being swept under the rug.

Rejected from dozens of jobs, from cleaning lady to office aide, Taylor says she turned to sex work in order to survive. From the ages of 18 to 23, she worked the dicey intersection of Santa Monica and Highland, the same depicted in the film. "I never fucked for money — it was always about my mouthpiece," she says bluntly. "In, like, five minutes, I’d step out of a car with four or five hundred dollars. Literally, five minutes." The problem was, "When you start counting that money, it’s not a good feeling." Taylor says she was arrested four times — twice in L.A. (including once in front of the 7-Eleven shown in Tangerine) and twice in Las Vegas.

Living in an apartment in Compton with her eventual Tangerine co-star Kitana "Kiki" Rodriguez was "scary every single day," she remembers. Nobody wanted to step outside their neighborhood at night. "We were at the lowest of the lowest before the movie." Around that time, Taylor was hanging out at the Los Angeles LGBT Center when director Sean Baker and his co-screenwriter Chris Bergoch spotted her in the yard, commanding a conversation with a group of friends. Even from 30 feet away, "she had this aura about her," Baker says.

Scenes from ’Tangerine.’ Magnolia Pictures

Tangerine went on to become the biggest little film in Hollywood last year, "certified fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes with a near-perfect rating from the country’s top critics. And on the strength of her performance — The New York Times called Taylor a "fluid, forceful screen presence" — Taylor now has an agent at ICM (the same firm that reps Nicki Minaj), a Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor, the first ever for a trans woman, and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Female, the same category as Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Jason Leigh. "It doesn’t really shock me," Taylor tells me over the phone as she microwaves leftover spaghetti for lunch. "I mean, because I’m a bad bitch. It’s just another day and I’m winning awards like Beyoncé."

Andrew Cullen

Last fall, Magnolia Pictures, the studio behind Tangerine, launched the first-ever Oscar campaigns for trans actresses for Rodriguez and Taylor (for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively) — sending DVD screeners to Academy voters and dispatching Taylor to mingle and glad-hand with reporters at press events (the more buzz around a film, the more likely Academy voters are to see and nominate it). About a week before nomination day, Caitlyn Jenner hosted a screening of Tangerine in L.A. Taylor was there and at many a luncheon. She ate what her fiancé, James Behnke, calls the "rich people food." "You know, like, the lamb that’s all pink inside?" she recalls. "I just went to McDonald’s right after."

An Oscar nod was always a long shot, but Taylor had hope. And when it didn’t happen, the first thing she thought was: "It’s because we’re transgender. There was no reason why we shouldn’t have gotten it." When I point out that Eddie Redmayne was nominated for a playing a trans woman in The Danish Girl, but she and Rodriguez were passed over, Taylor is quiet for a beat. "That’s horrible," she said. "Oh my god. That’s horrible." But she bristles at too much talk of her disappointment. "Nothing really hurts me anymore."

Andrew Cullen

Growing up in Richmond, Texas, Taylor tells me, "I didn’t really have love." When she was 13, her mother, Cecilia Bonner, was sent to jail for a parole violation, and Taylor, along with her brother and sister, went to live with their maternal grandmother. Taylor doesn’t remember her grandmother fondly — "ew" is one way she responds to mention of her — but she’s now close with her mom. At one point, I find myself in a lively three-way conversation with Taylor and Mom, after Taylor suggested we patch Bonner in on our call.

"She’s my daughter," Bonner says. "I am so very proud of her." She helped give Taylor, who was called Jeremiah at birth, her new name and encouraged her when she struggled with the insecurities of transitioning (Taylor often went out in "bumblebee shades" and shawls, Bonner says). "I told her, ’Your face is beautiful. You don’t need to do that. Don’t worry about what people think. Just keeping focusing on where you’re trying to go.’"

For her whole life, Taylor wished she had long hair and would often dress in women’s clothes, but said she didn’t know anything about being transgender until she realized one of her aunts was trans too. At 18, she ran away from her grandma’s house and followed that aunt to Hollywood. But their relationship was fraught. "She told me that I couldn’t sing, I couldn’t act, and I wasn’t exotic enough to model," said. "The reason why I didn’t start transitioning earlier was because she told me that I wasn’t going to be pretty." (Bonner says her sister was trying to protect Taylor from the hardships she’d endured as a trans woman.)

At 18, Taylor found herself alone in Hollywood, unemployed, and falling back on sex work. During that time, she’d often dress as a woman by night, until, in 2014, she began presenting female full-time and started her medical transition with hormone therapy. It was around then that she started going to the LGBT Center — and there, somewhat fatefully, her acting career was born.

Now she finds herself in Hollywood at a time when trans projects are "hip" — thanks to the success of Transparent and Orange Is the New Black. But if cisgender actresses (those assigned female at birth) are struggling to find substantive roles, you can imagine the prospects for a trans actress of color: reading scripts almost exclusively for trans roles, often stereotypical ones narrowly focused on the struggle of transition, and usually penned by cisgender writers.

Taylor’s agent, Joanne Wiles at ICM (who also represents Baker), says she takes a race-and-gender blind approach when seeking roles for Taylor. But when I ask if she’s met with pushback from casting directors who might not be similarly progressive, she says only that "there is still some getting used to the concept — but it’s gotten better."

Taylor’s manager, Allan Mindel, who also works on getting her auditions, says Taylor just lost out on a part on Mr. Robot that was written for a man (Mindel was hoping they would be willing to change it for Taylor’s sake) — but that the creator Sam Esmail "loved her." "Her past two or three auditions have been really stellar," he said. "That’s all we can do. We have to find the opportunities, and then somebody has to take a chance and book her."

Andrew Cullen

For her part, Taylor says she’s already tired of only being considered for trans roles — after Tangerine, she shot three short films: Happy Birthday, Marsha, playing trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, Diane From the Moon, playing a trans woman struggling for acceptance, and Viva Diva, playing a trans woman on a road trip.

"It’s so annoying to me," Taylor says. "I transitioned to be a woman. I don’t want to be the type of transgender woman that’s like, ’Oh, well I got a pussy now, don’t associate me with that transgender stuff.’ I want to be the type of transgender woman that always represents and supports my community," she says. Still, "Give me something in The Young and the Restless. Give me something on Empire where I’m just playing just a regular businesswoman."

Or, give her a romance. Newly engaged to Behnke, with whom she now lives in North Dakota, love is at the forefront of her mind. "My relationship is the most powerful one that I know in the world," she says — and yet she hasn’t seen one like it (a cis, hetero male with a transgender woman) on screen. "It’s sad," she says, "but some people think that we just are not to be loved."

Taylor first met Behnke, a furniture salesman 17 years her senior, last summer. She connected with him on Facebook a few months before, eventually graduating to Skype and an invitation to visit him in North Dakota. Before him, strange guys online would send Taylor dick pics and nasty messages she won’t even repeat to me — "a transgender fetish thing," she says. But Behnke was kind … and had "a gorgeous body." When they spotted each other at baggage claim, they kissed for the first time, right there in the middle of the airport. (Shortly after, she moved to North Dakota from Houston, Texas.)

Andrew Cullen

Today, in addition to planning a small winter wedding, Taylor is in the beginning stages of developing a television show of her own with Baker and actor/producer Jonathan Lisecki (Gayby). It’s not attached to a network, and Taylor and co. are remaining tight-lipped about the details, but she says it’s loosely based on her life and that, in addition to darker elements, like fleeing her grandmother’s home in Texas and "getting turned out to the streets," she also hopes that a love story will be a major arc on her show. It would be one of the few trans romances represented in mainstream film or television.

"Trans people, we’re like forbidden fruit," Taylor says. "Think about how many men love transgender women, but they’ll never come out and be open about it." She wants to see a film in which Daniel Craig has a trans girlfriend. "Nobody ever shows that love. I will."

In our last phone call, Taylor has just landed in Los Angeles for Saturday’s Spirit Awards. Arriving there elicits an "ugh" — for her, Hollywood is a place filled with bad memories and "fake people." Plus, Behnke stayed behind in North Dakota because tickets to the awards are $1,500 a seat (Magnolia covered Taylor’s). If she wins, she doesn’t have an acceptance speech planned. "I mean, my publicist won’t be happy about that," she says. But "I don’t want to be reading off some paper. Like, you have to make up all that shit just to be able to impress this audience? When I’m receiving an award, it’s going to come from the heart."

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