When Karla Sofía Gascón began talking with Jacques Audiard about starring in his audacious musical crime drama Emilia Pérez, she found herself keenly excited by the challenge of portraying the title role: a menacing drug lord seeking to undergo gender affirmation surgery so that she might finally live as her authentic self. “It’s a bit as if Beauty and the Beast were locked in the same body,” she explains. “When the film opens, she is Manitas, a woman who’s confined in a body she doesn’t belong in, but who finds herself at a point where she has the opportunity to leave her life behind — a life she wants no part of anymore.” With her fearless performance, Gascón pulled off one of the most singular acting feats in cinema history, embodying both the intimidating criminal and the luminous woman who later emerges ready to atone for the sins...