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Roberta Close
(1964 - living) Brazil

Roberta Close

Male-to-female transsexual

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Born in Rio de Janeiro, Close was given the massculine name of Luiz Roberto Gambine Moreira and brought up as a boy. According to her authorized biography she had defective male genitalia, with a small penis and no testicles. As a child she preferred to play with little girls and as a teenager she began to dress as a woman.

Her feminine appearance and behaviour led to conflict with her family and at the age 14 her father threw her out. Her public career began in 1981 when she caused a sensation in a number of gay balls in the annual Carnival celebrations and was featured almost nude in a magazine called Close, from which she took the name by which she is generally kown. Roberta Close is her stage name, in every day life she uses her Swiss legally adopted name Luiza Gambine Moreira.

Roberta started taking female hormones while still in her teens. She successfully avoided military conscription by reporting to the interview office wearing a white dress. Once voted the most beautiful woman in Brazil she soon became famous as a model and actress, she starred in the 1986 movie Si tu vas a Rio... tu meurs (If your you go to Rio.. your meurs) and was the subject of the hit song Close by Roberto Carlos and Erasmo Carlos.

She was perfectly happy as pre-op but pressure from agents and photographers finally led to her having SRS in London in 1989, as such operation was illegal in Brazil. Roberta has continued to develop her acting career and recently played a cabaret singer in the TV soap Mandacaru.

Roberta CloseRoberta was married to a Swiss engineer, Roland Granacher and for several years lived with him in Paris and Switzerland, but they separated in the Spring of 2000.

Roberta still is unable to get Brazilian documents that will classify her as a woman. For eight years she has been trying to change the name on her ID, which say Luís Roberto Gambine Moreira. Her case came to the Supreme Court February,1997 but Flávio Giron, the federal vice-prosecutor, opposed the change, arguing that "the expert exams carried out have concluded for the male sexuality of the petitioner."

In Brazil for Carnival, she didn't want to comment on the prosecutor's decision, but some voices stood up for her. Among them was that of famous Brazilian writer João Ubaldo Ribeiro.

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