Holly Woodlawn, a transgender actress who became a star of underground films during the 1970s and inspired Lou Reed's classic “Walk on the Wild Side,” has died. She was 69 years old.
Her manager, Robert Coddington, told the New York Times that the cause of death was complications from cancer. Her friend, Mariela Huerta, told The BBC that she died in Los Angeles and a memorial service is planned.
Woodland was born Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl in October 1946 in Puerto Rico. Her mother moved to New York to find better work, but the family moved to Miami Beach. At 16, Woodlawn hitchhiked to New York, a story that became “Walk on the Wild Side.” During the late 1960s, she considered a sex-change operation, but decided against it.
In the early 1970s, she entered Any Warhol’s sphere of influence, but only after she said in an interview in 1969 that she was - even though Warhol had no idea who she was. After the interview, director Paul Morrissey cast her in Trash. But she was only in a few other films after that, including Broken Goddess and Women in Revolt.
She tried cabaret in the late 1970s, but she soon moved back to Miami. In the ‘90s, she moved to West Hollywood and made cameo appearances in film and television shows occasionally. She even made an appearance in Amazon’s Transparent last year.