Making a name for herself. Hunter Schafer has become a household name following her acting debut in the first season of Euphoria alongside Zendaya.
In the HBO series, the actress plays the role of Jules, the best friend and eventual girlfriend of Zendaya’s character Rue. Following the show’s premiere in November 2019, it was clear that Hunter was destined to be a huge star, and even her costar agreed.
“I remember watching behind the camera and knowing that something had clicked,” Zendaya told Harper’s Bazaar of Hunter in a December 2021 interview. “She just took whatever pain she had, and she translated it into such a beautiful performance.”
Zendaya was referring to her costar’s special Euphoria episode which was released in January 2021 to bridge the gap between the first two seasons.
“There’s a lot of me in Jules,” Hunter told Harper’s Bazaar in the same interview. “I do think blurred lines between an actor and a character make a deeper character.”
After finishing high school in North Carolina, the HBO star moved to New York City to start her modeling career. Aside from acting, fashion is something that Hunter is passionate about.
“In some ways, I think it’s escapism. In other ways, I think it’s the absolute truth,” she told W Magazine in June 2021. “While it can feel extra to be putting that much time, energy or thought into your appearance, particularly for trans people, sometimes you’re not really yourself until you feel as though you’re presenting who you actually are to the world.”
As a trans actress in Hollywood, Hunter is a huge advocate for the LGBTQ+ community.
“I don’t know if I’ve talked about this in the press before, but I think there’s a phenomenon among the trans and queer community, and it’s why we make great artists a lot of the time,” she explained to Harper’s Bazaar. “When your exterior world and your body and your self are not in line with who you are, you turn inward. And my theory is that I built a really rich inner world until I started feeling like myself in my body.”
As her fame continues to rise, Hunter has a lot to look forward to in the future.
“Thankfully, I’m in a position to have people coming to me and have somehow found me in their vision,” the star gushed to W Magazine. “That’s been the wildest thing, to have these amazing artists I’ve never met before come forward with visions of me as an actress filling in a person of their own creation.”
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