2023-06-08 05:15:03
On the cover of his autobiography “Pageboy” Elliot Page (36) shows himself in a white fine-rib undershirt, jeans and a necklace. Short hair, confident gaze, straight into the camera. “My Story” is the subtitle for the actor’s first book, which has now been published in German. In 29 chapters on over 300 pages, Page writes movingly and openly about shame, trauma and self-discovery.
Page became famous with the dramedy “Juno” (2007) in the role of an unintentionally pregnant schoolgirl. The film earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. After that, things quickly took off in Hollywood, with roles in “Inception”, “To Rome with Love”, “X-Men: Days of Future Past” or “The Umbrella Academy”. But for Page, being in the spotlight also intensified the game of hide-and-seek with his sexuality, the rejection of his body, accompanied by depression, panic attacks and eating disorders.
The thought of writing a book has occurred to him more often, but only now can he be present in this body – after gender reassignment surgery – and accomplish this task, Page writes. This is now all the more urgent, because trans people are increasingly experiencing physical violence and hostility. He hopes that his story will help to “clean up the constant misinformation about queer and trans life”.
At the age of four he instinctively understood that he was not a girl, writes the Canadian. One of his early childhood memories: He tried to pee standing up. “Can I be a boy,” he asked his mother when he was six. Then later struggled to keep her hair short. He felt totally uncomfortable in clothes.
Page describes growing up in the Canadian port city of Halifax, the parents divorced early. He fell in love with girls and was insulted as a lesbian while he was still at school. After the success of “Juno”, just 20 years old, newspapers speculated about his sexual orientation, Page complained. Add to that the pressure from Hollywood to hide being queer for the sake of your career. Emotionally, Page describes the trauma of fighting against your own body, barely eating, injuring yourself with knives.
In 2014, at a youth conference of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organization in the United States, Page came out as a lesbian and said he no longer wanted to hide and lie. In “Pageboy” the actor speaks of one of the “most important and most healing moments” in his life – “I haven’t quite reached my goal yet, but several steps further”.
In the book (in the chapter “Famous asshole at a party”) Page describes an incident shortly after coming out as a lesbian, in which a drunk acquaintance said at a party: “I’ll fuck you really hard and you’ll be fine realize that you’re into men after all.” It was a famous actor, but Page keeps the name of the star to himself.
Page writes about falling in love and marrying dancer Emma Portner, and dying out after three years, shortly after coming out trans as Elliot. He is transgender and now uses the pronouns “he” (he) and the gender-neutral pronoun “they”, which has become common in English, Page shared on social media in December 2020. It was the result of a “damn long journey,” Page writes. “I made the decision to love myself.”
Page doesn’t leave out any details in the book: from the sex reassignment breast surgery, the tubes in the body after the procedure, testosterone injections, the joy of the first photo of himself only in swimming trunks. “You can’t smile any wider,” he describes the snapshot in swimming shorts, the scars on the upper body visible. He wrote about the photo on Instagram in May 2021: “Trans bb’s first swim trunks” – he added the hashtags #transjoy and #transisbeautiful.
Summing up the book, Page says, “This is the story of someone finding himself in the midst of obstacles, shame, hopelessness and pain. Emerging from it and thriving in ways he never thought possible.”
(SERVICE – Elliot Page: “Pageboy – My Story”, S. Fischer Verlag, 336 pages, 24.70 euros)
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