Elliot Page

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 1st of December 2020, the Canadian actor Elliot Page announced on social media that he is a trans man. He shared his new name, Elliot, and said his pronouns were he and they. The post carried weight because its author had been in front of cameras for decades. Page had worked as a child actor, been nominated for an Academy Award, voiced a game hero, and led a superhero series. How did a kid from Nova Scotia build that career? What did he choose to make once he gained the power to choose? And what did it mean to speak openly about himself, first in one way and later in another? The answers begin far from any film set, in a city on Canada's Atlantic coast.

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• 2. Halifax to the Screen

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  Elliot Page was born on the 21st of February 1987 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His mother, Martha Philpotts, was a teacher, and his father, Dennis Page, was a graphic designer. He was assigned female at birth and went by the name Ellen until he transitioned in 2020.

  The Halifax Grammar School kept him through grade 10, and he also spent some time at Queen Elizabeth High School. He graduated from the Shambhala School in 2005. After that he spent two years in Toronto in the Interact Program at Vaughan Road Academy, studying alongside his close friend and fellow Canadian actor Mark Rendall.

  His first role on camera came in 1997, when he was ten years old. He played Maggie Maclean in the CBC Television movie Pit Pony. The movie spun off into a series of the same name that ran from 1999 to 2000. That series role earned him nominations for a Gemini Award and a Young Artist Award.

  In 2002 he played Joanie in Marion Bridge, which is noted as his first feature-film role. That same year he appeared as Treena Lahey in five episodes of Trailer Park Boys. Touch & Go and Love That Boy followed in the early 2000s. Two television films, Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story and Ghost Cat, arrived in a single year. His work in Ghost Cat won a Gemini Award for Best Performance in a Children's or Youth Program or Series.

  The 2004 drama Wilby Wonderful brought him an award at the Atlantic Film Festival and a Genie Award nomination. That year he also played Lilith Sandström, the protagonist's daughter, in season 1 of ReGenesis. A film released in 2005 was about to change how audiences saw him.

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• 3. Breakthrough Roles

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  Hard Candy, released in 2005, cast him as Hayley Stark, a teenage girl who takes a sexual predator hostage. The film was a critical and commercial success. USA Today said he managed to be both "cruelly callous and likable". It named the work one of the year's most haunting performances. In 2006 he won the Austin Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress for the role. Also in 2005 he starred in the British film Mouth to Mouth.

  X-Men: The Last Stand, released in 2006, gave him Kitty Pryde, a girl who can walk through walls. Earlier X-Men films had used the character only in brief cameos played by other actors. Never before had she been a main character. The film was a commercial success.

  Juno, in 2007, made him widely known. He played the title character, a pregnant teenager, in a coming-of-age comedy-drama. The film was a critical and financial success, and many consider it among the best of the 2000s. At the time, Page became the fourth-youngest nominee for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

  Critic A. O. Scott of The New York Times called him "frighteningly talented". Roger Ebert wrote that no other actor gave a better performance that year, praising his "presence and timing" as "extraordinary". Beyond the Oscar nomination, he was nominated for a BAFTA Award, a Critics' Choice Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He won a Canadian Comedy Award, an Independent Spirit Award and a Satellite Award, along with numerous critics' prizes.

  He also appeared in The Stone Angel in 2007 and led An American Crime and The Tracey Fragments. The Boston Herald wrote of The Tracey Fragments that Page "is the real thing", adding that audiences already knew it. The Vancouver Film Critics Circle gave him its Best Actress in a Canadian Film award for that role.

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• 4. Dreams and Detours

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  Smart People premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2008. Page played the overachieving daughter of a college professor, and critics responded in mixed fashion.

  On the 1st of March 2008, Page hosted Saturday Night Live. On the 3rd of May 2009, he guest starred on The Simpsons as Alaska Nebraska, a parody of Hannah Montana. The episode was titled "Waverly Hills 9-0-2-1-D'oh".

  In September 2009, Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, Whip It, put him on a roller derby team. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. Its wide release came on the 2nd of October 2009.

  August 2009 brought a casting announcement for Christopher Nolan's science fiction film Inception. It was released on the 16th of July 2010 and drew widespread acclaim. Page played Ariadne, an architecture student who is new to dream espionage. His work brought nominations from the Saturn Awards and the MTV Awards.

  The black comedy superhero film Super, also from 2010, gave him a psychopathic teenage sidekick. He accepted the part after seeing the script. Reviews of the film were mixed, though critics praised his performance.

  In January 2010, Page began appearing in advertisements for Cisco Systems, including commercials set in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. That April he played Maggie Bailey, a struggling young mother, in Peacock. He called it "one of the boldest screenplays I've come across in my albeit short career".

  In April 2011, Woody Allen's To Rome with Love was announced, with Page as Monica in a film told in four separate vignettes. It was released in 2012. In 2013, Page said his own directing debut would be Miss Stevens, starring Anna Faris. The project went ahead without him, with screenwriter Julia Hart taking over as director. The same year he co-starred in Zal Batmanglij's thriller The East and Lynn Shelton's Touchy Feely.

  X-Men: Days of Future Past in 2014 brought him back as Kitty Pryde. It was a major box-office success. The performance earned nominations for the Teen Choice Award for Choice Movie Scene Stealer and the Kids' Choice Award for Female Action Star. In December 2014, he took a stranger turn, playing Han Solo in a staged reading of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

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• 5. Games and Superheroes

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  In June 2012, the studio Quantic Dream announced the video game Beyond: Two Souls. Page played one of its main player characters, Jodie Holmes, through voice acting and motion capture. The game was released in North America on the 8th of October 2013. Critics were polarized about the game itself.

  The magazine GamesTM described Jodie as a troubled child with a gift, haunted by spirits and struggling with growing up. It said Page brought "gravity and warmth" to her. His work earned five award nominations, including a British Academy Games Award nomination for Performer in 2014.

  Another 2013 game, The Last of Us, raised a dispute. Page accused the production of using his likeness without permission for the character Ellie. The character's appearance was afterward redesigned to better reflect the actual performer's personality and to make the character younger.

  On the 9th of November 2017, Netflix announced that Page had been cast as Vanya, later Viktor, Hargreeves in the superhero series The Umbrella Academy. The show ran from 2019 to 2024 and drew positive reviews. Page earned a Saturn Award nomination in 2019. In 2022 he won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor on Television.

  When Page came out as transgender, it was revealed that he would stay on the show. In March 2022, it was announced that his character would return in the third season and transition to male. In the episode "World's Biggest Ball of Twine", the character briefly comes out to his siblings. Gizmodo reported that the change was very likely made to reflect Page's own transition.

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• 6. The Producer's Chair

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  Freeheld, in 2015, was a film that Page both starred in and produced. It told the story of Laurel Hester and was adapted from a 2007 short film of the same name. Critics were mixed. Rotten Tomatoes said the film meant well but suffered from cardboard characters and by-the-numbers drama.

  Tallulah, a 2016 Netflix film, made him the title character, a young woman who abducts a baby and tries to pass it off as her own. It was his third collaboration with director Sian Heder and his second with Allison Janney. The Guardian credited "terrific performances" and Heder's direction and screenplay. That year he also voiced Rosy in the English version of the French film My Life as a Zucchini, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

  Flatliners, a 2017 remake of the 1990 film, was a commercial success that critics panned. Page and the ensemble cast still drew praise. Critic Matt Zoller Seitz wrote that the actors made stronger impressions than the shallow scenarios deserved. In 2017 he also produced and starred in The Cured.

  Gaycation, a documentary series on Viceland, ran in 2016-2017. Page hosted it with Ian Daniel and served as executive producer. It earned him two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. In 2019 he starred in the Netflix miniseries Tales of the City.

  There's Something in the Water, about environmental racism, was directed and produced by Page with Ian Daniel. It premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival and arrived on Netflix on the 27th of March 2020. The Hollywood Reporter found the standard documentary format a bit weepy but said the film got its job done.

  In August 2021, Page released a three-track EP on Bandcamp with Mark Rendall. The press called it a "lo-fi bedroom pop adventure". That month he also signed an overall deal with Universal Content Productions. In September 2021, he launched Page Boy Productions and appointed Matt Jordan Smith as Head of Development and Production.

  In February 2022, Flatiron Books acquired the rights to his memoir, Pageboy, for $3 million. It came out in June 2023 and debuted at the top of The New York Times Best Sellers List for Nonfiction.

  In October 2022, PageBoy Productions announced Backspot, with Page as executive producer. Filming in Toronto wrapped in March 2023. Close to You, which Page produced, wrote and acted in, wrapped filming by June 2023. Both films premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. His performance in Close to You won an award at the 2023 Calgary International Film Festival.

  As of June 2022, Page was writing a screenplay with Beatrice Brown, his co-star from Mouth to Mouth. In January 2025, he announced a television adaptation of Beyond: Two Souls, after his company acquired the rights from Quantic Dream. Later that month came word that he would reunite with Christopher Nolan for The Odyssey, listed for 2026.

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• 7. Coming Out Publicly

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  On the 14th of February 2014, at the Human Rights Campaign's "Time to Thrive" conference in Las Vegas, Page came out as a lesbian. That year The Advocate put him on its annual "40 Under 40" list. In 2015 he received the Human Rights Campaign Vanguard Award.

  In November 2017, Page said that filmmaker Brett Ratner had outed him at age 18, on the set of X-Men: The Last Stand. Co-star Anna Paquin said she was present when Ratner made the comment. Page wrote a long Facebook post thanking people who spoke out against abuse. He also voiced frustration with those who stayed silent.

  His later announcement, in 2020, had its own causes. Page said it was partly prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic and partly by anti-transgender rhetoric in politics and the news cycle. GLAAD spokesperson Nick Adams said Page would be an inspiration to countless trans and non-binary people.

  Emma Portner, his former wife, wrote on Instagram that she was "so proud". Netflix tweeted, "So proud of our superhero! We love you Elliot!" Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau expressed support, as did Ellen DeGeneres, Miley Cyrus, James Gunn and Kumail Nanjiani. Netflix said it would update Page's credits and metadata across all titles to reflect his name. Those changes were completed by the 8th of December 2020.

  The issue of Time dated the 29th of March and the 5th of April 2021 put him on its cover. He was the first openly trans man to appear there. He asked Wynne Neilly to take the photograph because he wanted another transgender person behind the camera.

  In the article, he described himself as queer and non-binary. He revealed that he had been recovering from top surgery when he came out and called the process "life-saving". He also recalled being nine years old, saying: "I felt like a boy... I wanted to be a boy. I would ask my mom if I could be someday."

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• 8. Private Life and Causes

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  PETA named Page and Jared Leto the Sexiest Vegetarians of 2014, though Page is vegan. He is also an atheist. He once said religion "has always been used for beautiful things, and also as a way to justify discrimination".

  In 2008, Page described himself as a pro-choice feminist on abortion rights. That year he was one of 30 celebrities in an online advertisement series for the US Campaign for Burma. The series called for an end to the military dictatorship in Myanmar. Later he spoke in favor of the Me Too movement and advocated for abortion rights.

  His romantic life has also been public. Page had a relationship with Olivia Thirlby during the filming of Juno. In 2014 he briefly dated Kate Mara, his co-star in Tiny Detectives and My Days of Mercy.

  In 2017, Page and the dancer and choreographer Emma Portner revealed they were together. In January 2018, Page announced they were married. They separated in mid-2020, and he filed for divorce in January 2021. The divorce was finalized in early 2021, and they remain close friends.

  In June 2025, Page announced a relationship with actress Julia Shiplett, best known for Overcompensating. Three months later, in September 2025, he appeared among the signatories of the Film Workers for Palestine boycott pledge.

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