“I wish I could go back and experience it now. As me.”
In a new essay for Esquire, Elliot Page shares his experience after the release of the 2007 film Juno.
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Despite the fact that he started acting at a young age, Juno was unquestionably his breakthrough part role, earning him an Oscar nomination. Elliot, on the other hand, didn’t come out as trans until much later.
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“When Juno was at the height of its popularity, during awards-season time, I was closeted, dressed in heels and the whole look,” Elliot continued. “I wasn’t okay, and I didn’t know how to talk about that with anyone.”
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Elliot added that actress Catherine Keener, his friend, was one of the few people with whom he could share things.
Before Juno, Elliot said he could wear whatever he pleased while being interviewed or participating in film festivals, as long as he understood “how fancy” the occasion was. With the screening of Juno at the Toronto Film Festival, that changed.
“I said I wanted to wear a suit, and Fox Searchlight was basically like, ‘No, you need to wear a dress,’” Page recalled.
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“They had me wear a dress, and…that was that. And then all the Juno press, all the photo shoots — Michael Cera was in slacks and sneakers.”
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“It’s easy for people to roll their eyes, but you know what? No. That was really extremely, extremely fucked up,” he said. “Regardless of me being trans! I’ve had people who’ve apologized about things: ‘Sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t know at the time.’ It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter if I’m trans or cis. Lots of cis women dress how I dress. That has nothing to fucking do with it.”
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“I get that people don’t understand. ‘Oh, fuck 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 shit literally did almost kill me,” he went on to say that he had been struggling with hunger, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks to the point that he couldn’t learn the scripts.
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“I’ve had to have plenty of devil’s-advocate conversations with cis people who were like, ‘Well, I’m not trans and I could wear a skirt!’ And it’s like, cool. Okay,” he said. “In my early to mid-20s, I didn’t know how to tell people how unwell I was. I would berate myself for it. I was living the life and my dreams were coming true, and all that was happening.”
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“People, especially teenage girls, really responded to that character, Juno,” he said. “Then you have that film have the success it had, and the major, major profit, between the film and the soundtrack — and then you fucking squash that all away. You squash it. So you’re benefiting greatly from this character that connected with people, and then you do that. It’s gross.”
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“I wish I could go back and experience it now. As me,” he added.
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