Laverne Cox was born in Mobile, Alabama and was raised by a single mother and grandmother within the AME Zion church. She has an identical twin brother, M Lamar, who portrays the pre-transitioning Sophia (as Marcus) in "Orange Is the New Black". Cox stated she attempted suicide at the age of 11, when she noticed that she had developed feelings about her male classmates and had been bullied for several years for not acting "the way someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act".