Arna Magnea Danks has worked behind the scenes in numerous films and television shows, primarily as a fight director and stunt coordinator and performer in such titles as Sense8, Game of Thrones, Trapped, and much more.
She will soon be starring in a major acting role in the upcoming movie Ljósvíkingar, wherein she plays one of two lifelong friends who start a business together, only for one of them to come out as a trans woman–that trans woman being played by Arna Magnea.
In a time when so many trans women are played by cis women (and even, more insultingly, cis men), it’s always refreshing to see an actual trans woman get roles like this. But in Ljósvíkingar, the script is flipped in an even more delightful way.
“I’m the trans woman Birna, but there is in the beginning of the film, you see me in the male role and I have to wear a fake beard,” she says. A trans woman donning makeup in order to play male role subverts the usual expectations, and the role itself attracted Arna Magnea’s attention in large part because she didn’t want the role to go to a cis person.
After I came out, and, and stopped pretending to be something I wasn’t, acting became easier.
“I thought, I’m the only trans woman in Iceland who’s a trained actress,” she says. “But the production company, they weren’t sure that I could play a man. Because I had transitioned so much. So I went for eight different auditions to prove that I could do this. And eventually, I got the role. And so this is my first lead role in a major film, and I’m really excited about this.”
One of the challenges of playing a male role was changing her voice, describing the difficulty of “finding my old voice again, that I spent so many years and months trying to get rid of completely, and finding my new voice that sits quite well with me, that’s the voice that I use now. Finding my old voice was … it was hard emotionally, but it surprised me how hard it was physically, as well.”
How being real helps you play pretend
Arna Magnea’s work on screen extends much further back then her coming out as trans, and one of the more intriguing points she raises is how coming out helped improve her acting ability.
“After I came out, and, and stopped pretending to be something I wasn’t, acting became easier,” she explains. “Because before, I was already acting, pretending to be something I wasn’t, then when I got a role, I was kind of acting on top of acting, if that makes sense. And now, I’m just me. And when I’m acting, I’m only kind of doing one role. And it’s so much easier, more enjoyable, and more fun. That’s what people don’t get when you come out. Regardless of all the hate and the bullshit and all that stuff. Coming out, it’s like taking the mountain off your shoulders, and you become so much lighter and freer. And then you start to get opportunities you didn’t get before, when you were closed off to the world.”
It’s never too late to come out. It’s never too late to be free. Because this freedom of being yourself, it’s worth anything. I mean, it’s worth dying for, it’s worth living for.
A later awakening
There is a trend in the trans community that most trans femmes will come out within a window from late teens to late twenties. While there is some truth to that which has been explored endlessly in other articles and books, some trans people will come out much earlier or much later in life for a variety of reasons. For Gen Xers such as Arna Magnea (and, in full disclosure, the author of this article), it has a lot to do with a lack of vocabulary, let alone information, to describe what we were experiencing at key moments in our youth, often coming across this information much later and provoking our own eureka moments.
Having already been out as bisexual, and then pansexual, that moment for Arna Magnea stemmed from an article she saw in Metro while riding the bus.
“It was such a small article,” she recalls. “And I’m not quite sure if I remember it correctly. But yes, this word: for the first time I heard this word transgender. Aand, and the way [the article subject] was describing her feelings and I when I just read like, Oh my God, Jesus Christ, this is me. This is me and it was just like an eye opener.”
And so, at the age of 32, she came out. For the first time.
Out then in then out again
Some people who began to transition may later choose to “detransition”. Very seldomly, this is because they realised they are in fact cis; more often than not, it is due to social pressures they face after coming out that compel them to go back in the closet. The latter was the case for Arna Magnea who, after suffering a traumatic sexual assault, was told by the mother of her child that if she wanted to see her child again, she would need to “man up, basically”, and move to Finland with her.
While this relationship did not last long, she later found love and got married to someone else, and although she was happy, the truth about who she was still simmered below the surface.
“I was struggling throughout our entire marriage because I was struggling between my desire to tell her the truth and fear of what would happen when I would tell her that I was struggling,” she says. “And eventually the only choice that I had left was either to die or in an accident so she could have the memory of her husband, or to live as myself.”
Ultimately, she made the choice to be herself, and says today she has a wonderful relationship both with her ex wife and her now three sons.
Be the woman you are; not the woman you would have been
It should go without saying that there is never a bad time to come out, but does Arna Magnea have any other advice for someone of advanced age who is considering doing so?
“My advice is, don’t try to become the 23 year old woman that you were not allowed to be,” she says. “And show yourself kindness. I struggled with this, but try to embrace the woman you are; the middle aged woman that you are today. It’s never too late to come out. It’s never too late to be free. Because this freedom of being yourself, it’s worth anything. I mean, it’s worth dying for, it’s worth living for.”
Even though I lost a lot by coming out, I also gained a lot: myself.
She continues: “When I was pretending to be something that I wasn’t, even though I was in a very happy and good marriage, and in a good job, I had everything. But I wasn’t me. And I was miserable and not being me. Even though I lost a lot by coming out, I also gained a lot: myself. And that is something that is so precious; to actually find your way home to yourself, to land in your own being. And that is something that no one that isn’t trans truly understands.”
Shooting for Ljósvíkingar begins this autumn, and is set to be released in late 2024. In the meantime, you can catch her in the Menningarfélag Akureyrar production of And Björk Of Course, the tickets for which are on sale now.
