Transgender actress Holly Woodlawn has passed away. Woodlawn, one of Andy Warhol's muses, died Sunday after a long battle with cancer in her Los Angeles home, her former caretaker and friend Mariela Huerta told the Associated Press. She was 69 years old.
At just 15, Woodlawn, who was born Harold Danhakl, changed her name and ran away from home, hitchhiking her way to New York City, according to People. Her story eventually became the famous first lines of the Lou Reed song "Walk on the Wild Side": "Holly came from Miami, F.L.A. / Hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A. / Plucked her eyebrows on the way / Shaved her legs and then he was a she / She says, 'Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side.'"
Once in New York City, she became one of Warhol's drag queen "superstars." "I was very happy when I gradually became a Warhol superstar. I felt like Elizabeth Taylor," she told the Guardian in 2007. "Little did I realize that not only would there be no money, but that your star would flicker for two seconds and that was it. But it was worth it, the drugs, the parties, it was fabulous. You live in a hotel, walk up five flights, scraping the rent. And then at night you go to Max's Kansas City where Mick Jagger and Fellini and everyone's there in the back room. And when you walked in that room, you were a STAR!"
Woodlawn remained in the underground film scene in the 1970s and never really found mainstream success, but did eventually go on to appear in independent films "Twin Falls Idaho" and "Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss" in the 1990s, according to Entertainment Weekly. Most recently, she appeared on the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Amazon series "Transparent."
