At the age of 48, actor Jeffrey Carlson passed away. In the daytime television series All My Children, the stage and film star made history by portraying one of the first trans characters. Susan Hart, a close friend and coworker, revealed the news of Carlson’s passing on July 6.
Being given the first name “Jeffrey” by his mother, a lover of the All My Children character Jeff Martin, foretold Carlson’s future in acting from the moment he was born in 1975. Carlson initially studied dramatic acting at the University of California Davis before moving to Long Beach, California, where he was raised. He travelled to New York City after receiving his diploma in 1997 so that he could train at Julliard as a member of Group 30 in their Drama Division. After completing his schooling in 2001, he quickly made his Broadway debut.
Carlson made her Broadway debut in 2002’s production of Edward Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia? He starred in the Broadway revival of Tartuffe by Molière the following year. Soon after, he won a Drama Desk nomination for his performance as Marilyn in Boy George’s Broadway musical Taboo. He then made his acting debut on television and in movies, playing a supporting role in Will Smith’s romantic comedy Hitch.
Then he made his debut in 2006 on the same television programme that gave him his name: All My Children. His ground-breaking on-screen persona was a British rock singer named Zarf who learned she was transgender during an episode’s storyline and was transitioning as Zoe. Additionally, she develops feelings for the lesbian character Bianca. Throughout the course of the television show, Zoe was seen going to support group meetings and consulting with an endocrinologist for healthcare that was gender-affirming.
While many previous early examples of transgender representation on television were characters who were already out or had already started their journey, Zoe is thought to be the first transgender character on daytime television to come out and proceed on a transition path. Zoe’s plot and Carlson’s acting earned All My Children a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Daily Drama in 2007.
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Carlson continued to write extensively about classical works, especially those by Shakespeare. He appeared in several plays at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., including the titles roles in Lorenzaccio and Hamlet. He performed in Measure for Measure at the Goodman Theatre. He has played the lead in several performances at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, including Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, and Edward II by Christopher Marlowe.
Carlson, who was well-liked in the Shakespeare community, most recently resided and taught in Chicago. In a Facebook post on Carlson, Broadway actor Patrick Page remembered him as a “great classical actor and a sensitive, luminous human being.” I had the good fortune to play the role of Claudius to Jeffrey Carlson’s Hamlet, allowing me to observe his quicksilver talent up close. As Coleridge put it, Kean’s reading of Shakespeare was “like reading lightning,” Nobody else could compare to him.
