Eddie Izzard uses only she/her pronouns now: "I just want to be based in girl mode"
After decades of proudly bucking gender norms, Eddie Izzard is now solely using she/her pronouns. Izzard opened up about the decision on television during the Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist Of The Year special, an annual event in which celebrities sit for artists participating in a competiton. “I try to do things that I think is interesting, and this is the first program I’ve asked if I can be ‘she’ and ‘her,’” Izzard, 58, tells artist Curtis Holder during the special on Thursday. “A little transition period.”
“It feels great because people assume — well, they just know me from before. I’m genderfluid, but I just want to be based in girl mode from now on,” she continues, adding that we all have “one life, live it well.”
Izzard—an Emmy winner who started out as a street performer before graduating to stand-up comedy specials and roles in Mystery Men, the Ocean’s films, The Riches, Hannibal, and more—previously spoke to the Windy City Times about her “modes” in a 2019 interview: “I
have boy mode and girl mode. I am kind of genderfluid. I want to
express both sides of myself, which has always been there. I am a tomboy
and tomgirl kind of person.”
Izzard—a longtime activist who had her genome sequenced in hopes of proving that being transgender is genetic—began identifying as a transvestite as early as 1992, and has since described herself as “a lesbian trapped in a man’s body” and “a complete boy plus half girl.” “I don’t call it drag. I don’t
even call it cross-dressing. It’s just wearing a dress,” she told Interview in 2014. “It’s not
about artifice. It’s about me just expressing myself.”