Credit: SWNS / Leo Macallan
A woman who transitioned to become a man aged 22 says people now tell him he looks like Tom Hardy.
Leo Macallan, 32, was born a female and called Liz but came out as gay to his friends and family in June 2010 - before realising he was transgender in May 2014.
Liz started transitioning a month later - starting on testosterone which gave him body hair and lowered his voice - adopting male pronouns and changing his name to Leo.
He had top surgery a year later in 2015 and has never looked back.
Leo said his friends and family were "happy and relieved" when they saw him for the first time after his surgery.
A woman who transitioned to become a man aged 22 says people now tell him he looks like Tom Hardy.
Leo Macallan, 32, was born a female and called Liz but came out as gay to his friends and family in June 2010 - before realising he was transgender in May 2014.
Liz started transitioning a month later - starting on testosterone which gave him body hair and lowered his voice - adopting male pronouns and changing his name to Leo.
He had top surgery a year later in 2015 and has never looked back.
Leo said his friends and family were "happy and relieved" when they saw him for the first time after his surgery.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 When I was a little girl, my previous name was Elizabeth, but I went by Liz.
00:03 I was always cognitively aware of being male, but when you're young, you don't really get it.
00:08 When I was six, I was six years old, starting connecting the dots of being like, "That's me, but I don't look like that. Uh-oh."
00:20 Titanic came out, and I saw Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Jack, in it.
00:25 I was just like, "That's what I want to be. Everything about that is what I want to be."
00:30 [Music]
00:42 I was brought up Catholic. Not a fun religion. Aesthetically pleasing, yes. Morally fun, no.
00:48 Every night before bed, I would pray that I would wake up and be Jack from Titanic.
00:54 I did that for a very, very, very long time. I don't know if it was because he was blonde,
00:59 or I was just already into the cinematic swelling of emotion, the love story, and him, and being very masculine.
01:07 He was everything that I wanted to be and look like, and that's when the wheels began to turn.
01:13 I was like, "I'm not that, but okay, it's time to do something about it."
01:17 Naturally, my six-year-old brain was like, "God will fix it. Let's ask God."
01:21 Fast forward all these years later, I was starting to take hormones to transition, and I was trying to think of a name.
01:27 I don't know. It's like, a lot of times people will talk about how they pick the name for their kid,
01:32 and they'll say that it's just a windswept feeling of, "That's it."
01:36 So one day, I had just went to see a childhood friend I had initially watched Titanic with when I was a kid,
01:41 and I was walking home from her house, and I just had this, like, "Phew," and I was like, "Leonardo DiCaprio. Leo."
01:48 To me, it would be a gift to six-year-old me. It would be like, "Here's your prayer being answered, you know?
01:55 You get to be him. We're going to get to be him now."
02:15 My life has been crazy. I've lived overseas for a lot of it. I've lived in Arkansas. I was working as a cowboy.
02:20 I was traveling all the time. I was running away from myself. I was drinking too much.
02:24 And it taught me so much, you know?
02:25 so much.
02:26 You know.
02:26 [BLANK_AUDIO]