Elliot Page says he once passed up a big movie role – because the thought of having to wear feminine clothing made him want to “kill” himself.
“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,” the “Juno” alum, who came out as transgender in December 2020, wrote in his new memoir, ”Pageboy.”
“I understood that if I were to do it, I would want to kill myself.”
Prior to transitioning, the “Umbrella Academy” actor shared in his tome that he was set to travel to England to play a “sought-after” role based on a “famous book” following awards season.
However, he wrote that it became “too much” to play a feminine character on-screen when the role he “played in [his] personal life was suffocating [him] 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,” Page elaborated.
“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.”
Continuing, he wrote, “I cringed at the way people lit up when seeing me in feminine clothing, as if I had accomplished a miraculous feat.”
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While Page didn’t reveal the name of the film in his book, Variety reported in 2008 that Page had been cast in an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre.” The role later went to actress Mia Wasikowska.
On Tuesday, Page told ABC that his sensitivity toward his gender identity and wearing women’s clothing was “complicated” because he was typically met with a less-than-empathetic response due to his career.
“People would go, ‘Well, you’re an actor. Just put on the f–king clothes.’ You know? But needless to say, it was so much more than that,” he said.
In his memoir, Page has since dropped a slew of bombshells including affairs and run-ins with “a—hole” A-list actors.
He also claimed that he and “Juno” co-star Olivia Thirlby were having sex “all the time” while they filmed the 2007 teen pregnancy film.
Page alleged that the two had been spending a considerable amount of time together and that one day, in Thirlby’s hotel room, Thirlby “looked directly at me and said point-blank, ‘I’m really attracted to you.’”
After confessing similar sentiments, the two allegedly “started sucking face.”
“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 would make me c-m, the first time I would open up.”
Thirlby, who came out as bisexual in a 2011 interview, married Jacques Pienaar in 2014. Page Six has reached out to her rep for comment.
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