Candis Cayne
Encyclopedia
Candis Cayne is an American actress and performance art
ist.
Known in the New York City
nightclub scene since the 1990s, Cayne came to national attention in 2007 for portraying transgender
mistress Carmelita on ABC
's prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money
. The role makes Cayne the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character in prime time.
where their parents taught at a Waldorf school, and the family lived on campus. McDaniel graduated from Maui
's Baldwin High School in 1989 and then spent a year in Los Angeles
, where she trained as a dancer.
and drag performer
. Unaware of "what a transsexual
was" until she lived in New York, about three years after her arrival McDaniel realized that the term described how she felt about herself. Already performing as "Candis Cayne" at New York gay bar
Boy Bar and as a featured performer at Tour in New York's Chelsea, the entertainer also participated in Wigstock
, the annual drag
festival in the East Village
. In 1995 Cayne appeared in the related documentary film
Wigstock: The Movie
, the comedy-drama film
Stonewall
, and the Universal Studios
comedy film
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
, for which she also did choreography. Cayne began transitioning
in 1996. In 1997 Cayne co-starred in the music video for RuPaul
's "A Little Bit of Love
" with female impersonator
Jazzmun
. Cayne also starred as the title character in the 1998 independent film Mob Queen
, and won the 2001 Miss Continental
pageant. In 2007 Cayne was cast as Annaka Manners in the 2007 RuPaul film Starrbooty
.
From 2007 to 2008 Cayne played Carmelita Rainer, a trans woman
having an affair with married New York Attorney General Patrick Darling (played by William Baldwin
), on the ABC
prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money
. The role makes Cayne the first transgender actor to play a recurring transgender character in prime time. She had a recurring role as the transgender character Alexis Stone in season six of Nip/Tuck
. Cayne appeared as a judge and Dean of Dance, on episode 5 of RuPaul's Drag U
. As a dance teacher, she taught three women original choreography to "No Scrubs
" by TLC
In 2011, she guest-starred on the TV show Necessary Roughness
as Geraldine.
community "the last great minority" and supports the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
As of March 2009, Cayne was engaged to a disc jockey
named Marco and lives in Los Angeles. However they broke up late March 2010.
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
ist.
Known in the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
nightclub scene since the 1990s, Cayne came to national attention in 2007 for portraying transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....
mistress Carmelita on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money
Dirty Sexy Money
Dirty Sexy Money is an American prime time drama series created by Craig Wright, which ran on the ABC from September 26, 2007 to August 8, 2009. The series was produced by ABC Studios, Bad Hat Harry Productions, Berlanti Television and Gross Entertainment...
. The role makes Cayne the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character in prime time.
Early life
Cayne, known as Brendan McDaniel prior to her transition, and fraternal twin brother Dylan were born in 1971 in MauiMaui
The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...
where their parents taught at a Waldorf school, and the family lived on campus. McDaniel graduated from Maui
Maui County, Hawaii
-National protected areas:* Haleakala National Park* Kakahaia National Wildlife Refuge* Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge- Demographics :As of the 2000 Census, there were 128,094 people, 43,507 households, and 29,889 families residing in the county. The population density was 110 people per...
's Baldwin High School in 1989 and then spent a year in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, where she trained as a dancer.
Career and transition
McDaniel moved to New York in the early 1990s, making a name for herself as a choreographerChoreography
Choreography is the art of designing sequences of movements in which motion, form, or both are specified. Choreography may also refer to the design itself, which is sometimes expressed by means of dance notation. The word choreography literally means "dance-writing" from the Greek words "χορεία" ...
and drag performer
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...
. Unaware of "what a transsexual
Transsexualism
Transsexualism is an individual's identification with a gender inconsistent or not culturally associated with their biological sex. Simply put, it defines a person whose biological birth sex conflicts with their psychological gender...
was" until she lived in New York, about three years after her arrival McDaniel realized that the term described how she felt about herself. Already performing as "Candis Cayne" at New York gay bar
Gay bar
A gay bar is a drinking establishment that caters to an exclusively or predominantly gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clientele; the term gay is used as a broadly inclusive concept for LGBT and queer communities...
Boy Bar and as a featured performer at Tour in New York's Chelsea, the entertainer also participated in Wigstock
Wigstock
Wigstock was an annual outdoor drag festival that began in the 1980s in New York's East Village that took place on Labor Day. Traditionally the festival would act as the unofficial end to the summer for the gay community of New York City...
, the annual drag
Drag (clothing)
Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early...
festival in the East Village
East Village, Manhattan
The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...
. In 1995 Cayne appeared in the related documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
Wigstock: The Movie
Wigstock: The Movie
Wigstock: The Movie is a 1995 documentary film focusing on Wigstock, the annual drag music festival that had been held New York City's East Village through the 1980s and 1990s. The film presents a number of performances from the 1994 festival, including Crystal Waters, Deee-Lite, Jackie Beat,...
, the comedy-drama film
Comedy-drama
Comedy-drama is a genre of theatre, film and television programs which combines humorous and serious content.-Theatre:Traditional western theatre, beginning with the ancient Greeks, was divided into comedy and tragedy...
Stonewall
Stonewall (film)
Stonewall is a 1995 historical comedy-drama film. Inspired by the memoir of the same title by openly gay historian Martin Duberman, Stonewall is a fictionalized account of the weeks leading up to the Stonewall riots, a seminal event in the modern American gay rights movement...
, and the Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar is a 1995 American comedy film, starring Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo as three New York drag queens who embark on a road trip...
, for which she also did choreography. Cayne began transitioning
Transitioning (transgender)
Transitioning is the process of changing one's gender presentation to accord with one's internal sense of one's gender - the idea of what it means to be a man or woman...
in 1996. In 1997 Cayne co-starred in the music video for RuPaul
RuPaul
RuPaul Andre Charles , best known as simply RuPaul, is an American actor, drag queen, model, author, and singer-songwriter, who first became widely known in the 1990s when he appeared in a wide variety of television programs, films, and musical albums. Previously, he was a fixture on the Atlanta...
's "A Little Bit of Love
A Little Bit of Love
"A Little Bit of Love" is a song and music video performed and produced by drag icon RuPaul and released on February 25, 1997. This was the second single released from the Foxy Lady album...
" with female impersonator
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...
Jazzmun
Jazzmun
Jazzmun is the stage name of Nichcalo Dion Crayton , an American actor and nightclub performer specializing in female impersonation in the Los Angeles area.-Background:...
. Cayne also starred as the title character in the 1998 independent film Mob Queen
Mob Queen
Mob Queen is an American romantic comedy released in 1998, directed by Jon Carnoy and written by Mike Horelick.-Synopsis:Brooklyn Docks, 1957....
, and won the 2001 Miss Continental
Miss Continental
Miss Continental is an annual transgender beauty pageant founded in 1980. It is organized by the founder of the Baton Show Lounge in Chicago and is usually held over Labor Day weekend.-Winners:*1980: Chilli Pepper*1981: Heather Fontaine...
pageant. In 2007 Cayne was cast as Annaka Manners in the 2007 RuPaul film Starrbooty
Starrbooty
Starrbooty is a low-budget film written by and starring drag queen RuPaul. The movie is the fourth in a series of films starring the title character, a top secret government agent and supermodel...
.
From 2007 to 2008 Cayne played Carmelita Rainer, a trans woman
Trans woman
A trans woman is a male-to-female transsexual or transgender person and the term trans woman is preferred by some individuals over various medical terms. Other non-medical terms include t-girl, tg-girl and ts-girl...
having an affair with married New York Attorney General Patrick Darling (played by William Baldwin
William Baldwin
William Joseph "Billy" Baldwin is an American actor, producer, and writer, known for his starring roles in such films as Flatliners , Backdraft , Sliver , Fair Game , Virus , Double Bang , as Johnny 13 in Danny Phantom , Art Heist , The Squid and the Whale , as himself...
), on the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
prime time drama Dirty Sexy Money
Dirty Sexy Money
Dirty Sexy Money is an American prime time drama series created by Craig Wright, which ran on the ABC from September 26, 2007 to August 8, 2009. The series was produced by ABC Studios, Bad Hat Harry Productions, Berlanti Television and Gross Entertainment...
. The role makes Cayne the first transgender actor to play a recurring transgender character in prime time. She had a recurring role as the transgender character Alexis Stone in season six of Nip/Tuck
Nip/Tuck
Nip/Tuck is an American drama series created by Ryan Murphy, which aired on FX in the United States. The series focuses on McNamara/Troy, a plastic surgery practice, and follows its founders, Sean McNamara and Christian Troy...
. Cayne appeared as a judge and Dean of Dance, on episode 5 of RuPaul's Drag U
RuPaul's Drag U
RuPaul's Drag U is an American reality television series. Hosted by RuPaul and a team of drag queen "professors," Drag U is a spin-off of the series RuPaul's Drag Race...
. As a dance teacher, she taught three women original choreography to "No Scrubs
No Scrubs
"No Scrubs" is a 1999 song recorded by R&B girl groupTLC for their album FanMail. Released as the album's first single, "No Scrubs" became TLC's third number-one single and eighth top 10 single on the Billboard Hot 100. It also earned them their second Grammy nomination for Record of the Year...
" by TLC
TLC (band)
TLC is an American musical trio whose repertoire spanned R&B, hip-hop, soul, funk, and new jack swing. Originally consisting of singer Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, rapper-singer Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes and singer Rozonda "Chilli" Thomas it found success in the 1990s while also enduring a series of spats...
In 2011, she guest-starred on the TV show Necessary Roughness
Necessary Roughness (TV series)
Necessary Roughness is a USA Network television series starring Callie Thorne and Marc Blucas. The one-hour drama series was picked up for 12 episodes on January 19, 2011...
as Geraldine.
Activism and personal life
Cayne has stated, "I'm not trying to be a spokeswoman for the transgender community; I just want to be looked at as a living, breathing, happy human being." She calls the LGBTLGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...
community "the last great minority" and supports the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
As of March 2009, Cayne was engaged to a disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
named Marco and lives in Los Angeles. However they broke up late March 2010.
External links
- http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid67242.asp (11/26/08)
- http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid66732.asp (11/21/08)
- http://www.advocate.com/exclusive_detail_ektid47896.asp (8/8/07)
- http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid14900.asp (8/31/01)
- Candis Cayne profile - QueenMother.tv
- Candis Cayne hosts NewNowNext Awards for LOGO