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Jeffrey Carlson, the actor who played the groundbreaking transgender character Zoe in daytime soap All My Children, has died aged 48.
His death was reported by his friend and Shakespeare Theatre Company actor Susan Hart, who played Gertrude opposite Carlson’s Hamlet.
She said Carlson died on 6 July and that she was “just devastated.”
Jeffrey Carlson health condition: Was He Sick?
Details surrounding his death were not immediately available.
On Monday, the Chicago Police Department revealed that “police arrived at the location before 12 p.m. on July 6 where his body was discovered. His last point of contact was on July 3.”
“A 48-year-old male was found unresponsive and has been pronounced at the above address.
The victim took his prescribed medication with alcohol beverages.”
A cause and manner of death is still pending, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Who was Jeffrey Carlson?
Carlson, who was born in California in 1975, was reportedly named after All My Children character Jeff Martin as his mother was a fan of the show.
He would go on to appear in more than 50 episodes of the soap opera, starting in 2006.
Carlson first appeared on the show as a British rockstar called Zarf, but was called back months later when the writers decided to reintroduce the character as a transgender woman.
Zoe’s gender transition was shown in detail, including her meetings with an endocrinologist, joining a transgender support group and coming out to her parents.
While there had been few small roles for transgender characters on US television at that time, Zoe was the first such recurring character in a daytime soap.
Her introduction was controversial: in 2006, the LA Times reported Zoe’s upcoming transition had “sparked a heated debate” on fan message boards and that while soap audiences had become accustomed to gay characters, “tackling the first transgender coming-out on network television could be risky for a soap opera at a time when daytime dramas are suffering serious audience erosion”.
