Elliott Page claims that making the movie Juno “literally almost killed him.”
The 2007 film chronicled the experience of a teenage girl named Juno through her pregnancy.
Page portrayed a pregnant adolescent who decides to go back to school and give birth to the couple’s adoptive child.
13 years after the incident, the actor came out as a transgender man in 2020.
Last year, their autobiography, Pageboy, shot to the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list.
Following its release, the film became an enormous hit and was nominated for four Oscars, with Page winning the Best Actress prize.
However, despite the movie’s success, Page struggled and “didn’t know how to talk about [it] at the time.”
“During awards-season time, I was closeted, dressed in heels and the whole look – I wasn’t okay, and I didn’t know how to talk about that with anyone,” he wrote in Esquire magazine.
“I can’t pinpoint a ‘worst’ day. But when Juno was blowing up – this sounds strange to people, and I get that people don’t understand. Oh, f*** you, you’re famous, and you have money, and you had to wear a dress, boo-hoo. I don’t not understand that reaction.”
“But that’s mixed with: I wish people would understand that that sh*t literally did almost kill me. … I was living the life and my dreams were coming true, and all that was happening.
“And yet, for example, when I was shooting Inception, I could pretty much not leave whatever hotel I’d be staying in.”
Page detailed their life after transitioning and coming to live as himself in public in his memoir Pageboy, published last year.
After it was released, Page said he was “loving acting again”.
“Thank goodness,” he exclaimed.
“I did struggle to see a future and what that was going to look like.”
“In a body that I feel at home in and can feel present in, all of that makes me more inspired creatively and artistically.”
In their memoir, Page also talked about his romance with co-star Olivia Thirlby.
He said: “I was taken aback the moment I saw Olivia Thirlby. She seemed so much older, capable, and centered.”
“Sexually open, far removed from where I was at the time. But the chemistry was palpable, it pulled me in.”
Page went on: “It was on. I had an all-encompassing desire for her, she made me want in a way that was new, hopeful.”
It was one of the first times someone had given him an orgasm, he remarked.
Along with describing the locations of their purported private moments, Page said that he and Olivia had sex “all the time” while filming Juno.“
“Her hotel room, in our trailers at work, once in a tiny, private room in a restaurant … We thought we were being subtle.”
“Being intimate with Olivia helped my shame dissipate. I didn’t see a glint of it in her eyes and I wanted that — done feeling wretched about who I am,” he penned.