Karla Sofía Gascón

2002–2009: Early roles in Spain and move to Mexico

Before 2014, Gascón portrayed male characters and was credited under her birth name Juan Carlos Gascón.^[6][7] She appeared in Spanish daily soap opera El súper portraying a flight attendant,^[8][9] as well as in such other shows as Calle nueva and El pasado es mañana.^[10] Early roles also included film appearances in Se buscan fulmontis (1999), Me da igual (2000), Box 507 (2002), and Say I Do (2004).^[11][9]

Convinced by Mexican filmmaker Julián Pastor, Gascón moved to Mexico in 2009 to continue her acting career, taking on a number of telenovela roles,^[12][13] starting with the gypsy Branko in Corazón salvaje.^[14] She made a one-time return to the Spanish film industry to star alongside Tony Isbert in El cura y el veneno.^[15] In the Mexican box-office hit The Noble Family (2013), she played the supporting role of Peter Pintado, the gold-digging boyfriend of Karla Souza's character Bárbara Noble, who poses as a Spaniard but is actually from Puebla.^[14][16][17] In 2014, she appeared in El Señor de los Cielos as the "ruthless" Spaniard Iñaki Izarrieta, an associate of Aurelio Casillas.^[18]

2018–2024: Transition, Emilia Pérez and fallout

In 2018, having completed most of her gender transition, Gascón published a magical realist memoir, Karsia, Una historia extraordinaria (Karsia: an Extraordinary Story) under the name Carlos Gascón. It doubled as a public announcement of her new identity as Karla Sofía Gascón.^[4][8]

She portrayed Lourdes Buendía in the teen drama series Rebelde (2022).^[19] In 2024, she starred in Jacques Audiard's musical crime film Emilia Pérez, which premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. In it, she portrays a powerful cartel leader who is married with children. The character fakes her death, medically transitions from male to female, and assumes a new life as Emilia Pérez.^[20]

Gascón won the festival's Best Actress prize, shared jointly with her three female costars Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Zoe Saldaña. Gascón is the first openly trans actor to win a major prize at Cannes.^[21] Later in the year, she became a Chevalière of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.^[22] In December 2024, she was reported to have signed on to star as Aunt Encarna in Las malas, an adaptation of Camila Sosa Villada's Bad Girls to be directed by Armando Bó.^[23]

In January 2025, after her Academy Award for Best Actress nomination for Emilia Pérez, a series of tweets Gascón made between 2019 and 2021 resurfaced. They were identified as containing bigoted speech against several communities,^{[24][25][26][27]} including one calling Islam a "hotbed of infection for humanity",^[26] ones with Catalanophobic content,^[28] and one wondering whether the Oscars had become an "Afro-Korean festival", a "Black Lives Matter demonstration", or International Women's Day.^[29] Gascón deleted the tweets and apologized,^[30][31][32] then deactivated her X account the next day.^[33] In February 2025 she was dropped from promotional activities for Emilia Pérez, including award shows (Premios Goya), and her book's publication was canceled.^[34][35] Gascón described herself as a victim of cancel culture.^[34]

In 2025, she appeared in the Italian comedy film Men and Other Inconveniences.^[36]

She made her return to a film set after the tempestuous Emilia Pérez awards season with the shooting of Western adventure film Trinidad, set to portray a villainous role,^[36] which she described as "Darth Vader, but female".^[37]