Elliot Page
Elliot Page (born February 21, 1987, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) is a Canadian actor best known for his performances in the comedy-drama film Juno (2007) and the Netflix television series The Umbrella Academy (2019– ).
Page was assigned female at birth and named Ellen by his parents, graphic designer Dennis Page and elementary school teacher Martha Philpotts. The couple divorced when Page was young, and Page moved with his mother to Halifax’s Hydrostone neighbourhood. When Page was 10 years old, a local casting director visited Page’s music class at Halifax Grammar School in search of children to cast in Pit Pony (1997), a TV movie based on a young adult book that would be produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After watching the class engage in several exercises, the casting director asked Page to audition for the film. Page won the role of Maggie MacLean, a younger sister of the main character, Willie MacLean.
Pit Pony was spun off into a television show that ran for two seasons (1999–2000). Reprising his film role in the series, Page was nominated for a Young Artist Award, presented by the Young Artist Foundation to those under the age of 18 for exceptional performance. In 2002 Page was then cast in his first feature film, Marion Bridge, an adaptation of the play of the same name by Daniel MacIvor. Page starred as Joanie, a 16-year-old girl whose birth was the result of her mother, Agnes, having been raped. That same year Page also netted his first lead role: Stella Blackstone in the made-for-television movie I Downloaded a Ghost. The young actor relocated to Toronto at age 16, where he attended Vaughan Road Academy—a school with a special program that catered to students already engaged in careers.
Just before turning 18, Page filmed his first movie in Los Angeles, Hard Candy (2005). Page starred in the independent film as Hayley Stark, a teen vigilante who captures and tortures a man she believes to be a pedophile. The performance won Page critical praise and led directly to Page getting a small part in the big-budget superhero film X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) as Kitty Pryde, a mutant who can move through walls. Page later reprised the role in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014).
Though the X-Men franchise gave Page his first credit in a Hollywood blockbuster, it was the following year’s quirky coming-of-age film Juno (2007) that was his breakthrough. Not only was the movie a commercial and critical success, but Page’s portrayal of the eponymous Juno MacGuff, a teen girl who accidentally becomes pregnant while sexually experimenting with her best friend, was singled out by reviewers as among the best of the year. Page received a nomination for the Academy Award for best actress.
Page’s new stardom was confirmed by his hosting Saturday Night Live in March 2008. Because of the long development periods of Hollywood films, however, audiences did not immediately see more of the in-demand actor on-screen. In 2008 Page appeared as part of an ensemble cast in the film Smart People. He played the part of Vanessa Wetherhold, a snobbish overachiever determined to attend Stanford University. In 2009 Page’s sole film credit was for Whip It, a story about a Texan teen who begins playing Roller Derby against the wishes of her controlling parents.
Moviegoers finally saw Page in another main role in 2010—as Ariadne in Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending science-fiction thriller Inception. In the film Ariadne is a graduate student of architecture hired by a corporate espionage agent (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) to create a traversable dreamworld in the subconscious of a businessman. A hit with audiences and reviewers alike, Inception grossed over $825 million worldwide and further popularized Page as an actor.
Also in 2010 the actor costarred in the superhero spoof Super, portraying the unhinged sidekick to the hapless Crimson Bolt (Rainn Wilson), and played Maggie Bailey in the psychological thriller Peacock, in which Page’s character becomes involved with a man who has dissociative identity disorder. In 2012 Page appeared in Woody Allen’s romantic comedy To Rome with Love.
In 2013 Page brought his craft to a different medium: video games. Using motion-capture technology to record the actor’s movements, developer Quantic Dream cast Page as heroine Jodie Holmes in the action-adventure game Beyond: Two Souls. He earned praise for the role and was nominated for the British Academy Games Award for best performer. Page starred in two more films that year, Lynn Shelton’s drama Touchy Feely and Zal Batmanglij’s thriller The East.
In February 2014 Page announced that he was a lesbian at Time to Thrive, a Human Rights Campaign conference in Las Vegas. Following this revelation, Page played his first lesbian character, Stacie Andree, in Freeheld (2015). He also began producing and starring in a documentary series about LGBTQ+ cultures around the world called Gaycation (2016–17). Other credits from 2015 include a costarring role in the thriller Into the Forest, opposite Evan Rachel Wood.
In 2016 the actor notched another three film credits (Tallulah, Window Horses, and My Life as a Zucchini), and in 2017 he notched three more (My Days of Mercy, The Cured, and Flatliners). In 2019 Page codirected a documentary about environmental racism, There’s Something in the Water, with his friend Ian Daniel. Page returned to television in 2019, playing Shawna Hawkins in the Netflix miniseries Tales of the City and Vanya Hargreeves in the first season of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy. The latter series was swiftly renewed for a second season, which was released in July 2020. Meanwhile, Page pursued a relationship with dancer and choreographer Emma Portner. The pair took their relationship public in 2017 and announced in 2018 that they were married.
In December 2020 Page revealed that he was a trans man and that his first name would thenceforth be Elliot. Weeks later Page and Portner issued a joint statement announcing their amicable divorce. News of the actor’s transition received widespread attention; Time featured him on the cover in March 2021, making Page the first openly trans man to be so featured. Netflix was notably supportive. Not only did the company change all of the actor’s credits and metadata on its streaming service to match his new name, but it had 2022’s third season of The Umbrella Academy written so that Page’s character also transitioned, changing his name from Vanya to Viktor.
In June 2023 Page published Pageboy: A Memoir, an account of his career thus far and his journey toward acceptance of his true identity. The book debuted at the top of The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction.