It’s a strange time to be a trans male actor in America.
My anatomy is under increasing attack by the U.S. government. I can never forget that I am tied to a medical system that may not be able to help me soon. And yet, within the very same day I learn I may not receive life-saving medical care, I also have casting directors pass me over because they see me as another handsome white guy trying to play Bruce Wayne or Don Draper. It’s ironic–it’s what it means to be both a man, and not a man; to be both categorically alive, and not quite real. It’s a strange time to be an invisible man, or an invisible trans. Or both.
Right now, the American socio-political cultural machine tries harder than ever to enforce ideas that people like me don’t exist, from FOX news to The New York Times. And while the larger pop-cultural apparatus questions our phenomenological existence (whether us trans folks are valid as people) it simultaneously turns us into headlines, targets, and clickbait.
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Telling a group they are nothing, over and over, paradoxically makes them something. It’s ironic. As I walk through this world on a day to day basis, I learn that I am nothing, and I am somehow everything, especially as it relates to the world’s problems, all at once.
It’s a dizzying feeling.
This paradox, I would further argue, is simply confusing: particularly to non-trans people. What are non-trans people supposed to think and feel when the news weaponizes trans folks for either good or ill? Are they supposed to protect us at all costs, or wish our demise? It’s hard to know what is real… especially if you don’t know a trans person in real life.
But there is another place where stories get told that isn’t the news cycle. And this place can create real intimacy between its viewers and actors. This place… is Hollywood.
Ah, Hollywood! A world within worlds where you can be whatever the role demands of you. A place where you can slip in and become someone else. Over, and over again. And people will fall in love with you based on how your character makes them feel, not what is going on in your character’s pants. (Unless you are on shows like Dying for Sex, then I’d argue it’s for both of those juicy things.)
This hyper-fixation on trans bodies poses an interesting challenge for me as an actor. As an actor, I want to be seen–not as a token, and not through the lens of gender politics. I’m not particularly interested in playing “trans on-screen,” those obvious tropey stories built to pander to non-trans audiences who want to package our lives (or pseudo-lives) up neatly in a box. Frankly, I find it boring.
What’s more interesting–and dare I say, revolutionary–is stepping into roles where I’m allowed to be messy, flawed, funny, seductive. Where I can play a non-trans person, or a trans person, and it isn’t more or less real. Where I can just be a complex human. Not a ghost. Not in-between, but full on alive. Even in my (potential) death.
It’s ironic that I find my aliveness in the horror genre. A landscape where all kinds of folks tend to fight for their life but ultimately get pretty brutally killed. My upcoming film, House of Abraham, out June 13, gave me that chance: to be alive in the face of death. I play Alex–a young man and Olympic free diver whose humor and bravado mask a profound grief. (Hey, for all the men reading this, does that sound at all relatable?)
On the surface, Alex is the charismatic clown at a secluded retreat where things go, as the horror genre demands, very awry. But underneath Alex’s tough, witty exterior, he’s a survivor of something much darker: the kind of despair that almost pulled him 300 feet under the ocean’s surface during a free dive.
Alex’s arc isn’t about being trans. It’s about being human. It’s about battling the void inside yourself while living in a country eager to legislate your existence away. His transness is present, a part of his journey, but not foregrounded. It’s part of the air he breathes, not the heavy banner he waves.
That distinction matters now more than ever. In a moment when dozens of states are trying to reduce and erase trans people from healthcare, education, and public life altogether, the urge to flatten our narratives into tragedy or triumph is strong. But our real stories live in the messy middle: in the small, stubborn acts of survival. In the moments when we choose to face our complexity, no matter how messy it is. In the moments that link me to all other men, regardless of how they identify. Because I know the grief of men. I live it now. I didn’t always live it, but as I walk through the world as the Jason Bateman of trans men, I know grief like Jason’s character in Ozark knows grief. It’s universal, the existential pain we all carry as human beings thrust onto a floating rock in space.
But grief is powerful, and can be like the fumbling key to a door when Freddy Krueger is trouncing down the hallway towards you. Grief can open us up. Feeling grief, together, can spark a revolution towards new potentialities, towards, dare I say, hope. And maybe even, open us up to a liberating sense of joy. For the messiness inherent to each and every one of us.
When House of Abraham opens this week, some audiences might expect a “trans story.” What they’ll find instead is a horror story about coercion, choice, and the fragile, vital urge to claim agency over your own ending–and maybe, create your own new beginning. It’s unsettling. It’s tender. It’s terrifying. It’s complicated. It also makes for one hell of a good movie.
Kind of like being trans in America. It’s rough but we can’t look away. In fact, I know that now, more than ever, we need to look more deeply. Under the hood.
You see, I’m not here for easy answers. For clean reads. I’m not interested in visibility for its own sake. I’m interested in intimacy built through feeling deep, complex emotions together. That’s what the horror genre does at its best: helps us face our fear, process our fears, and close the distance between us–even if just for the length of a scene. If you leave watching House of Abraham feeling haunted, that’s good. That means I’ve reached you, and you are still alive.
And so am I. Sort of.
Marval Rex is a transmasculine, Catalan-American actor, comedian, director, and professional astrologer. Raised in Mormon-dominated Utah, he has been creating genre-bending live artworks and films for over a decade. Rex is the creator of “Big Dad Energy,” the world’s first exclusively transmasculine comedy night. His solo show, REXODUS: Out of the Closet and Into the Tribe, intertwines his personal journey of gender transition and spiritual discovery. He has appeared in television and film projects such as the Emmy winning Book of Queer, House of Abraham and Airplane 2025.
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