I was attracted to intense, traumatic work. Two years earlier, Page gave an extraordinary performance in Hard Candy as a 14-year-old vigilante avenging herself on a sexual predator. An American Crime is the horrifying true story of Sylvia Likens, who was tortured to death by a woman she was left in the care of. The same year Page played another 16-year-old with heartbreaking conviction. The coming-of-age comedy drama showed off Page’s ability to play nuanced characters – Juno is a fabulous mix of precocious and naive, confident and vulnerable, gobby and withdrawn. Juno was a huge commercial hit (it cost around $7m to make and took more than $230m at the box office), won Page a best actress Oscar nomination. He was 20 when he starred in Juno as the 16-year-old who found herself pregnant by her geeky-cool friend Paulie Bleeker, played by Michael Cera. I was feeling things through other characters without permitting myself to do so in my life.” You’re going to a place where it’s your job to feel and connect as much as possible, and we live in a world that encourages us on some level not to. While he wasn’t capable of untangling his own brambled emotions, he loved doing it on behalf of his characters. Photograph: Catherine OpieĪcting gave him the opportunity to get lost in pretend worlds. ‘The decision to come out was scary and intense,’ says Elliot Page. He cut himself, got wasted and stopped eating, but none of it did any good. He self-harmed from a young age, smashing himself in the head with a hairbrush when getting ready for school, failing to recognise, or accept, the face staring back at him in the mirror. All he knew was that he felt a huge amount of discomfort and emotional pain. He knew girls weren’t supposed to do that, but he didn’t consider himself a girl. “I would press on my vagina, holding it, pinching and squeezing it, hoping I could aim,” he writes in Pageboy. Despite the success, he never felt right.Įven as a four-year-old, he used to try to pee standing up. By the age of 10 he was working as a professional actor in the TV movie Pit Pony, then the Canadian TV series of the same name and in a number of demanding roles in well-received independent films. As a youngster, he was a talented footballer – though not good enough to turn professional, he says. Page grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with a graphic designer father and schoolteacher mother. While most people in his life have embraced his coming out – first as gay, then as trans – he no longer talks to his father and stepmother. But he admits there are some relationships that, for now at least, seem to be beyond repair. Again, he says, in many cases it has enabled them to talk in ways they never did at the time. When he wrote about former partners, he showed them the sections in advance. It has also allowed him to reflect on other relationships. I was feeling things through my characters without permitting myself to do so in my life It has allowed us to talk about things for the first time in a meaningful, sincere way.” As an actor, it’s your job to feel and connect as much as possible. It’s been very beneficial for my relationship with my mom. And it’s important to him that they are: “It was really healing getting a lot of stuff out. He’s Zooming from home in Toronto and, unsurprisingly, is a little anxious about the book: “I’m nervous, but grateful for the opportunity to have written it.” Unlike most celebrities’ books, there is no ghost involved – these are all his words. Today he is dressed all in black – cap, hoodie, glasses and cargo pants – and could pass for mid-20s. For most of his life, the last has been the greatest struggle. He’s looking for love from women he’s infatuated with, his parents and ultimately himself. There are a dizzying number of blink-and-you-miss-them relationships, often with famous people, some named, some anonymised. It’s also a love story, sometimes unrequited, usually closeted (of course) and occasionally full on.
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