Acting

Hélène Hazéra

Hélène Hazera (born 1952) is a French journalist, actress, filmmaker, radio producer and trans activist. Born into a bourgeois family with ties to the French Resistance, Hazera grew up in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Her late adolescence was marked by crisis: she was committed to a psychiatric hospital at 17 following a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and went through a suicidal period. Estranged from her family and without resources, she prepared for the entrance exam to the IDHEC film school before being allegedly barred from entry by its director, and turned to sex work. She transitioned in 1973. As a trans woman and close friend of Marie France, she joined the Front homosexuel d'action révolutionnaire (FHAR) and became a central figure and political voice of the Gazolines collective. In the mid-1990s she joined Act Up-Paris, where she led the trans commission. A self-described libertarian, she was also a member of the Confédération nationale du travail and an occasional contributor to Le Monde libertaire on LGBT issues and press workers' rights.