Patricia Arquette on complicated characters, and the fight for LGBTQ rights

Patricia Arquette has spent her entire adult life in front of the camera. She made her feature film debut in 1987 at age 18 in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Since then, she’s performed in critically acclaimed roles in movies, and in TV shows such as Medium and Severance. Most recently, she stars in the Apple TV+ show High Desert playing Peggy, a manic former drug dealer trying to get her life together in a new career as a private investigator while struggling to remain sober.

In her personal life, Arquette’s parents were civil rights and environmental activists who took their kids to union picket lines. Arquette has continued that legacy and has been vocal about LGBTQ rights. Her sister, Alexis, who died in 2016, was trans.

“I’m horrified that… LGBT families are being attacked. That trans kids cannot even discuss being trans. They can’t find a support system. They can’t have therapists help them, that their families have to live in fear all the time,” she says. “I mean, this is the United States of America.”