Amy Kaufman: The survival of Elliot Page
LOS ANGELES — All was calm there, deep in the woods of Nova Scotia, but Elliot Page could not find peace.
He'd withdrawn to a remote cabin hoping it would serve as a balm. He and his wife had separated, and he'd given up his apartment in New York City. Then a friend offered up their sparsely furnished retreat in the Canadian forest. It was 2020, the height of the pandemic. The border was shut, but he was a citizen, born in Halifax. So he drove.
It was an extraordinary place, the cabin. Down a dirt road familiar only to wildlife. Pears and apples from an abandoned orchard littered the grounds. But alone in the stillness, Page started to crack. All of the self-hatred he'd been pushing down for years — the discomfort he felt in his body, the anger toward those who'd told him to repress his identity — spilled out.
One night, he tried to knock himself out. Took his knuckles to his face and pounded over and over until bruises formed. For days after, he sat in a lawn chair on the porch, ashamed, his face sore. And then he heard a voice.
"You don't have to feel this way."
It was a small voice, barely discernible. But it kept echoing in his head. A way out.
"It was as if something in my brain turned around," recalls Page, now 36. "The agonizing voice saying, 'No, you're not,' 'No, you can't' just switched and became very gentle and loving. 'Oh, maybe I'm trans. Why don't I explore that?'"
Within weeks, he'd scheduled a Zoom consultation with a doctor to discuss top surgery. The procedure was scheduled for November. A month later, he announced to fans on Instagram, who have known him since the release of "Juno" 13 years prior, that his name was Elliot.
The writers of "The Umbrella Academy," the Netflix superhero series on which he'd played a female character for two seasons, immediately began rewriting the role to make him trans. After shooting the third installment of the show in early 2021, Page sat down with Oprah Winfrey to discuss his transition.
Within a span of a few months, he had become the most famous transgender man in the world.
And there was so much joy. In his new body, which he shared for the first time online, grinning in a pair of swim trunks. He presented at the Oscars in a memoir in which he reckons with his journey to self-acceptance. Raw, harrowing and often heartbreaking to read, it comes out this week.
