Hari Nef

Hari Nef is a transgender actress, model, and writer who has been one of the most visible and culturally influential trans women in American entertainment since she broke through in the mid-2010s. She began transitioning while a student at Columbia University and quickly became a model and spokesperson whose visibility coincided with a pivotal moment in trans cultural recognition. She joined the cast of Transparent (2014) and played Blythe, a rival graduate student, in the first season of You (2018), and has since appeared in Assassination Nation (2018), playing Bex, an explicitly transgender teenager; Ratched (2020); and The Idol (2023). Her most visible role to date was as one of the Barbies in Greta Gerwig's Barbie (2023), a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster in which a trans woman played a key part without her transness being a plot point — a milestone in normalized trans representation. Nef has written and spoken at length about trans identity and visibility, and has been an outspoken advocate against transphobia in media and policy.