April Ashley April Ashley April Ashley, MBE (born 29 April 1935) is an English model and restaurant hostess. She was outed as a transgender woman by the "Sunday People" newspaper in 1961 and is one of the earliest British people known to have had sex reassignment surgery. Born George Jamieson in Sefton General Hospital, Liverpool, she was one of six surviving children of a Roman Catholic father, Frederick Jamieson, and a Protestant mother, Ada Brown Jamieson. In her childhood in Liverpool, Ashley suffered from both calcium deficiency, requiring weekly calcium injections at the Alder Hey Children's Hospital, and bed-wetting, resulting in her
History of transgender people in the United States Broadway, and it featured the first transgender teenage character ever in a Broadway show - La Cienega, a transgender woman played by actor Gregory Haney. That same year singer Tom Gabel made headlines when she publicly came out as transgender, planning to begin medical transition and eventually take the name Laura Jane Grace. She is the first major rock star to come out as transgender. Director Lana Wachowski, formerly known as Larry Wachowski, came out as transgender in 2012 while doing publicity for her movie "Cloud Atlas". This made her the first major Hollywood director to come out as transgender.