Transgender actress Rebecca Root talks to Miranda Jessop about her boyhood in Surrey and her long journey to become the women she is today
I am in North London to meet Rebecca Root, star of the UK’s first transgender sitcom, Boy Meets Girl, which appeared on BBC2 last year. Welcomed into her mansion flat, Rebecca’s home for over 20 years, I follow her tall frame down the corridor and into her study, the walls of which are adorned with framed theatre programmes signed by actors of note.
Rebecca is dressed down in jeans and a grey hoodie, but her make-up is meticulous and her shoulder length hair carefully styled. As soon as we start talking, we realise that we were both born in the summer of ‘69, just before the Moon landing. But there the similarity ends. For Rebecca was actually born a boy and, in 2003, while I was giving birth to my first child, she was beginning her gender transition from male to female.
Elmbridge Magazine - January 2015
The first 10 years of Rebecca’s life were spent in Woking. Her mother worked as an auxiliary nurse, while her father had a job at a bank in Guildford. A middle child with an older sister called Rachel and a younger sister, Rosalind, who was eight years her junior, Rebecca prefers not to reveal her previous name, but she is candid about every other aspect of her extraordinary life.
“From about four or five, I had a sense of being different and was aware that I felt more comfortable wearing my sister’s clothes and playing with her dolls,” she says. “Thinking back, Mum and Dad were probably as confused as I was. They weren’t cruel in any way, but my behaviour certainly wasn’t encouraged. Accordingly, by the time I was seven or eight I started to hide my feelings. But there were moments when they surfaced. I remember having a crush on a lad and playing kiss chase; the other boy was partly flattered but also a bit terrified.”
It was when she reached secondary school age, and the family moved to Oxfordshire, that Rebecca began to feel really unhappy.
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(As a general rule, use the term preferred by the individual)
Transgender – Umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression differs from what is typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.
Trans – Shorthand for transgender or transsexual.
Transgender man – One who was assigned female at birth but identifies and lives as a man.
Transgender woman – One who was assigned male at birth but identifies and lives as a woman.
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“I was bullied for my posh accent, for being an outsider. I was isolated and lonely. The only people who were my friends were teachers, and they weren’t really friends; they were just friendly. I learned to suppress and bury things and it was hard work.” As her life became increasingly divided, Rebecca struggled deeply. “On the one side I pursued a heteronormative lifestyle – fancying and going out with girls – but at the same time I explored dressing up and make-up.”
During those school years, Rebecca’s love of acting proved her lifeline. After sixth form, she trained at London’s Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts and spent the next decade as a jobbing actor. But all the time she was struggling with her inner emotions and, in her late 20s, she hit rock bottom.
“I realised that I couldn’t go on as I was. It was a choice between losing my mind, taking my own life and seeking help about changing my gender. My first appointment with a counsellor took place on my birthday and it was such a relief to be able to have a conversation with a professional about my feelings.”
Once Rebecca had taken the decision to change gender, she immediately began to feel happier. As part of the process, she gave up smoking and started on a low dose of hormones. It was at this point that she told her family of her intentions.
“They were shocked, but it didn’t come entirely out of the blue and they only wanted me to be happy,” she reflects.
On June 3, 2003 she officially renounced all claims to her previous name and became Rebecca.
"I was working in the box office at the Royal Opera House and I went to a solicitor’s in Covent Garden in my lunch hour to make a statutory declaration.”
And how did she choose her name?“I just really liked Rebecca and it was only afterwards that I realised it fitted in perfectly with my sisters’ names. My dad calls us Ra, Re and Ro,” she laughs.
From the moment that she became Rebecca she lived life as a woman, starting with using the ladies toilets that very afternoon. Over the following two years, she moved to a higher dose of hormones and commenced the long process of facial and body hair removal. At the end of the obligatory two-year period spent living as a woman, she was able to undergo a six-hour operation on the NHS to complete her transition.
How, I wonder, did she feel after her gender reassignment surgery? “Fantastic! I went to stay with Mum and Dad while I was recuperating, which was great. Life is so much easier now,” she says.
Rebecca Root
Rebecca Root and co-star Harry Hepple in Boy Meets Girl
In fact, not only is Rebecca happy in her skin, but today she is also experiencing great professional success.
“Boy Meets Girl raised my profile considerably, and now I don’t know if people are staring at me because I’m trans or because they’ve seen me on the telly. But I love it when people come up to me with positive comments.”
This month sees the release of The Danish Girl, a film based on the life story of painter Einar Wegener, who underwent a pioneering gender reassignment operation in the 1930s to become Lili Elbe. Einar/Lili is played by Eddie Redmayne, while Rebecca appears as Lili’s female nurse.
“It’s a small part, but the nurse has a special bond with Lili as she sees her through her surgery. My scenes are with Eddie and he’s an adorable man who plays Lili very well.”
Rebecca has also completed a Voice Studies MA and, in between acting jobs, she runs a private practice specialising in vocal adaptation for transgender clients.
Currently single, she is bisexual and, she says, not actively looking for a partner.
Danish gIRL
Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl
“I don’t really date, as I have had my fingers burned. It is much easier to be single.”
Would she like to have had children?
“Yes, I would have loved to be a parent, but I enjoy my relationship with my sisters’ children.
They see me as the bonkers aunt!”
One sister lives in Guildford and their parents recently moved to Cranleigh, and Rebecca is looking forward to rediscovering the area where she spent her childhood.
So what advice would she give a young person who is thinking of changing gender?
“Don’t be afraid, breathe, believe and keep going,” she says.
Her words are still echoing round my head as I catch the bus down Highgate Hill and realise that we have something else in common apart from our age: in the very same year that I was taking on a new identity as a mother, Rebecca was giving birth to a new identity of her own, as a woman.
For family and individual support on gender identity issues go to mermaidsuk.org.uk
The Danish Girl was released on January 1
