Elliot Page stricken with shingles while filming ‘Inception’ due to stress of feeling ‘out of place’
Due to the stress of feeling “out of place” years before his gender transition, Elliot Page got shingles while filming ‘Inception’.
Elliot Page suffered shingles while filming ‘Inception’ due to the stress of feeling “out of place”.
The 36-year-old ‘Juno’ actor – formerly known as Ellen Page and who came out as homosexual in February 2014 before his gender transition in December 2020 – played Ariadne in Christopher Nolan’s 2010 blockbuster alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy.
He said in his new memoir ‘Pageboy’ about his shingles during shooting popping “out of my spine” as he filmed with “a cast full of cis men”: “Despite everyone being delightful to work with, I felt out of place... I did not understand the role I found myself in.
“For the first two weeks of the film, I joked I would be recast with Keira Knightley, and rightfully so.”
Elliot filmed ‘Inception’ more than 10 years before undergoing his gender transition, and years before he told the public he was attracted to women, which he has called a “chaotic” period in his life.
He added in his autobiography: “My body hoarded the unexamined emotions, sensations, wants, and needs. Easy sentences prepared in my brain, stuck.
“They were visible to me, written out, I heard the voice but my mouth refused to cooperate. Just the tick tick tick of the windup toy, or nothing at all.”
Elliot has also told how he was groomed and sexually abused by men and a woman as a teenager.
The actor said he was groomed by a director at the start of his career before being targeted by other abusers around 2005 when he made a film called ‘Hard Candy ‘ – ironically about a 14-year-old female vigilante’s trapping and torture of a man whom she suspects of being a sexual predator.
Elliot told The Guardian the director who groomed him took him to dinner, stroked his thigh under the table and told him: “You have to make the move, I can’t.”
Just before he turned 18, Elliot said he was also targeted by members of the ‘Hard Candy’ production team.
He said in ‘Pageboy’ about one apparently funny and kind man who drove him home before he forced himself on the actor: “His voice sweet, his hands on my shoulders, he guided me to the bedroom.
“I went stiff. Unsure what to do as he stood tall and removed his glasses. He laid me down on the bed.”
Elliot was told by the man he wanted to perform a sex act on the actor, which he said left him feeling numb.
He added in his autobiography: “I froze. After it was over, he tried to stay in the bed with me. I had thawed marginally and told him he couldn’t, to get out.”
Elliot was again targeted at the start of shooting ‘Hard Candy’ by a female crew member who offered to take the actor house-hunting.
He said in his book: “I was standing in the empty living room, in front of the couch, when I felt her grab me.
“She pressed her face into mine, some version of kissing. That freezing coming over me again. The next thing I knew I was on the rug, the floor firm on my back. I didn’t say no, I did not resist, I just stiffened.”
