The Juno star, who first came out as gay in 2014 and a transgender person in December 2020, reveals he tried to learn to pee standing up as a child because he never felt like a girl.
The 36-year-old Canadian actor detailed his past romances and other shocking revelations about his life in his new memoir, Pageboy. The Oscar nominee, who was once known as Ellen Page, said he never felt like himself growing up as a girl.
“I would press on my vagina, holding it, pinching and squeezing it, hoping I could aim,” he wrote.
Elliot also revealed that he turned down an opportunity of working in a movie after his breakthrough role in Juno because he didn’t want to wear a feminine costume.
“I would imagine myself in a woman’s costume from the mid-nineteenth century. The dress, the shoes, the hair, flashed before my eyes. It was too much after having put on the mask for awards season,” he wrote. “I understood that if I were to do it, I would want to kill myself.”
“After awards season concluded, I was supposed to make a film in England. It was based on a famous book, and I was attached as the main character, a sought-after role,” Page added.
The Inception star went on to describe his struggles with sexual identity and said it was not easy to explain to his team that he didn’t want to accept a role because of ‘clothing.’
“It was too much to play a role on-screen when the role I played in my personal life was suffocating me already. I pushed myself to dispel the truth for fear of banishment, but I was despondent, trapped in a dismal disguise. An empty, aimless shell.”
The actor continued, “It wasn’t easy to explain to my reps that I couldn’t take on a role because of clothing. A face would scrunch up and tilt sideways, ‘But you’re an actor?’ Wardrobe fittings for films ripped at my insides, talons gashing my organs.”
“I cringed at the way people lit up when seeing me in feminine clothing, as if I had accomplished a miraculous feat.”
Page also admitted to having a secret affair with the House of Cards actress Kate Mara in the same memoir and said the two had a relationship when Mara was dating The Handmaid’s Tale star Max Minghella.
Mara, 40, dated the Babylon star, 37, for almost four years and parted ways in 2014. Kate is now married to actor Jamie Bell with whom she shares two children.
“The first person I fell for after my heart was broken was Kate Mara. She had a boyfriend at the time, the lovely and talented Max Minghella,” Page wrote in his book.
He explained that his romance with the Fantastic Four alum felt ‘safe’ as she wasn’t fully available due to her commitment to Minghella.
“This was right after I’d come out as gay [in 2014], and it was a time of exploration and also heartbreak. I think my relationship, or whatever you want to call it with Kate, very much encapsulates a certain dynamic that I consistently found myself in, which was falling for people that — I think a lot of us do this — who aren’t fully available.”
He added, “And the sort of safety in that and the highs and the lows and the serotonin bump, and then it goes away.”
According to Page, he is still close with Kate, and they still love and care for each other.
“I think the love and care that we have for each other is it’s very own special thing. Separate from the intimacy that I write about.”
Elliot and Kate have done several projects together – in 2014 the duo appeared together in Tiny Detectives. Three years later, the two actors were chosen to do another film as an on-screen couple – they portrayed the roles as two women who fell in love with each other in My Days of Mercy.
The movie was released in 2019 when they had already parted ways.
Following their split, both actors moved on to marry different people – Kate married her Fantastic Four costar, Jamie Bell, in 2017. Meanwhile, Elliot tied the knot with Emma Portner in 2018. The couple split in 2020 and finalized their divorce in 2021.
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