Featured Image Credit: Cindy Ord/Getty Images
Topics: Elliot Page, Celebrity
Rhiannon Ingle
In his 2023 memoir titled Pageboy, Elliot Page opened up about the beautiful but at times heartbreaking story of his journey of becoming his authentic self.
Page, who hails from Canada, shared that, as a teenager, he had to put up with 'a lot of sh*tty predatory behaviour' and detailed one particular incident which saw him stalked by an older male fan he had befriended on social media after moving to Toronto aged 16.
The stalking got so out of hand that the 38-year-old Juno actor began fearing for his life and recalled his father's 'outrageous' response after he blamed him for the traumatising ordeal.
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After he finally told his parents what was happening, Page's father reportedly said: "I’m going to come to Toronto and kick your a**."
In Pageboy, the actor said that his father’s response was even more traumatising than the stalking, writing: "It is not as easy to forgive my father.
"When his kid needed safety, when his kid needed love, when his kid needed protection, he threatened violence."
Page, who publicly came out as gay in 2014 and then as transgender in December 2020, continued: "Outraged because I had the audacity to communicate with an older man on the internet when I was a minor. If I didn’t deserve care in that moment, if I didn’t deserve safety and love, when would I ever?
"That sentence has lived in my body much longer than the man’s threats, his obsession, his fingers fondling my arm."
Elsewhere in his memoir, Page opened up about the moment a fellow actor 'verbally assaulted' him after he came out as gay.
The chapter which delves into the incident is aptly titled 'Famous A**hole at Party'.
The Umbrella Academy star recalls being at a birthday party in Los Angeles in 2014 when the actor, whom Page describes as an 'acquaintance', told him: "You aren't gay. That doesn’t exist. You are just afraid of men."
He then shockingly told Page: "I’m going to f**k you to make you realise you aren’t gay."
Just a few days after, he bumped into this actor at the gym where he claimed: "I don’t have a problem with gay people I swear."
"I think you might," Page told him at the time.
Elsewhere in the chapter, the Inception actor explained that he'd had 'some version' of that interaction happen 'many times' throughout his life.
"A lot of queer and trans people deal with it incessantly," he continued. "These moments that we often like don't talk about or we're supposed to just brush off, when actually it's very awful."
Page explained that this was the precise reason he included that anecdote in Pageboy, noting that 'it’s about highlighting the reality, the s**t we deal with and what gets sent to us constantly, particularly in environments that are predominantly cis and heterosexual'.
"[In Hollywood] these are very powerful people," he went on. "They're the ones choosing what stories are being told and creating content for people to see all around the world."
Noting that many people at the party saw and heard what happened, Page added: "I’m purposely not sharing his name.
"But he will hear about this and know it’s him."