Holly Woodlawn

Known for Acting

10/26/1946

Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico

Biography

Holly Woodlawn was a transgender Puerto Rican actress and Warhol superstar who appeared in his movies Trash and Women in Revolt. She was probably best known as the Holly in Lou Reed's hit pop song "Walk on the Wild Side".

Known For (44 credits)

Movie

Beyond Queer: Voices from Bohemia

2023

Former Warhol Superstar and creator of the seminal sexual politics performance spectacular Bitch!Dyke!Faghag!Whore!, Penny Arcade, washed up on the shores of the Lower East Side of New York as a teenager in 1967. After decades in the Downtown art world, Penny’s personal relationships with dozens of outrageous characters, from the world famous to the fascinatingly obscure, led to the creation of the Lower East Side Biography Project, an oral history of New York’s Bohemian culture from the 1950s to the present. These half-hour biographies have broadcast weekly on Time Warner Manhattan Cable Television for 20 years. Beyond Queer is a feature documentary compiled from these television interviews.

Movie

Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies

2019

Anjelica Huston narrates this exploration of the spectacularly dreamlike world of Salvador Dali’s protégé, Steven Arnold, and his strikingly creative and influential body of work filled with occult rituals, Hollywood camp, and surrealist art nouveau whimsy. Taken from more than 70 hours of original and archival footage, including rare scenes of Holly Woodlawn, director Vishnu Dass digs deeply into the decadent countercultural and inspiring life of this unheralded multimedia artist of the queer community.

6.6

Movie

Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story

2015

Seed Money is the story of Chuck Holmes, a San Francisco pornographer turned philanthropist. Holmes helped shaped and create gay identity in the years after Stonewall, and later became a major contributor to gay advocacy groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the LGBT Victory Fund, only to find later in life that while his money was welcome in philanthropic circles, he sometimes wasn't.

6.4

Transparent

2014

An LA family with serious boundary issues have their past and future unravel when a dramatic admission causes everyone's secrets to spill out.

7.4

Movie

I Am Divine

2014

Harris Glenn Milstead, aka Divine (1945-1988) was the ultimate outsider turned underground hero. Spitting in the face of the status quos of body image, gender identity, sexuality, and preconceived notions of beauty, Divine succeeded in becoming an internationally recognized icon, recording artist, and character actor of stage and screen. Glenn went from the often-mocked, schoolyard fat kid to underdog royalty, standing up for millions of gay men and women, drag queens and punk rockers, and countless other socially ostracized misfits and freaks. With a completely committed in-your-face style, he blurred the line between performer and personality, and revolutionized pop culture.

2.5

Movie

Continental

2013

A stylish and thoughtful examination of the infamous Continental Baths NYC circa 1968-1976. Told by the people who were there.

Movie

Dust

2012

DUST is the story of an eccentric family in crisis. Unable to move forward or functionally communicate, three change-averse siblings collide with their older brother and their own myopic worldview with comic and tragic results. The film follows the siblings Lynn, Baker and Margaret Marie as they cope with the news that their oldest brother Coke plans to move into the family home with his new wife, Patty, a woman the other siblings cannot stand. All four siblings find themselves confronted with their inability to cope with life.

Movie

She Gone Rogue

2012

While visiting her Auntie Holly, Darling enters a parallel, dream-like world, where a series of encounters with transfeminine figures (played by Holly Woodlawn, Vaginal Davis, and Flawless Sabrina) explore the complexity of identity politics, gender construction and the edification of affects amid a kaleidoscopic depiction of time and place.

6.0

Movie

Beautiful Darling

2010

James Rasin's documentary “Beautiful Darling” honors American Transgender actress and best-known Warhol Superstar, Candy Darling, and her all-too-brief life and career, with a combination of current and vintage interview material, rarely seen archival photos and footage, and extracts from Darling's movies.

Movie

Heaven Wants Out

2009

Once a hot spot, the Bowery Follies Cabaret is now just another broken down New York City nightclub populated with the last vestiges of vaudeville entertainers, misfits and a headliner known as Heaven. She, like the club, has been there too long. In a drunken reverie, she wanders through the lives of the men who watch her sing night after night, looking for love ...trying to make sense of how she got there in the first place, hoping, for a ticket out.

Andy Warhol's Factory People... Inside the Sixties Silver Factory

3.5

Movie

Andy Warhol's Factory People... Inside the Sixties Silver Factory

2008

Takes an in-depth look at the lives and times of the people who hung out with Andy Warhol and "worked" at the Silver Factory during the Sixties, making it all click as a new counter-culture arose and began to exert its influence throughout the arts.

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis

6.6

Movie

Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis

2007

In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.