She acted in Orange Is the New Black, Doubt, and other series.
She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first openly transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in the acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990.
Cox is the first openly transgender person to appear on the cover of a Cosmopolitan magazine, with her February 2018 cover on the South African edition.
In June 2014, Cox became the first openly transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine.