Matrix Filmmaker Lilly Wachowski Comes Out as Transgender Woman

Lilly Wachowski, one-half of the sibling filmmaker duo best known for their Matrix trilogy, has come out as a transgender woman in an essay published in the Windy City Times, a Chicago LGBT newspaper.

The 48-year-old Wachowski, whose older sister Lana is also transgender, wrote that for the last year, media outlets have been indicating that they would break the news of her transition from Andy to Lilly — a prospect, she writes, that brought “dread and/or eye rolling exasperation.” She finally decided to come out herself after a reporter from the Daily Mail arrived on her doorstep, trying to coerce her into sharing her story.

“My sister Lana and I have largely avoided the press. I find talking about my art frustratingly tedious and talking about myself a wholly mortifying experience,” Wachowski writes in the essay, which the Windy City Times published on Tuesday. “I knew at some point I would have to come out publicly … I just wanted — needed some time to get my head right, to feel comfortable.”

In the essay, Wachowski writes that she “will continue to transition all of [her] life.” Her announcement comes almost four years after her older sister Lana, who was named Larry at birth, revealed her own transition in a promotional spot for the siblings’ 2012 film Cloud Atlas.

Since the release of The Matrix in 1999, the Wachowskis have been among Hollywood’s most celebrated science-fiction filmmakers. Their filmography, which commonly explores dystopian visions, includes V for Vendetta, the story of a renegade anarchist in a neofascist England, and last year’s sweeping space opera Jupiter Ascending.