Canadian actor Elliot Page has revealed that he knew should have been born male from the age of four, and asked his mother age six: ‘Can I be a boy?’
Page, 36, came out as a transgender man in December 2020 and is one of Hollywood’s most high-profile trans stars.
The Oscar-nominated star of Juno on Tuesday published his eagerly-anticipated memoir, Page Boy.
Page writes about his extreme gender dysmorphia – describing his struggles to come to terms with who he was, and detailing disturbing incidents of confronting a stalker and self-harming.
Page explains that he knew from an early age, growing up in Nova Scotia, that he should not have been born female.
Elliot Page, 36, is pictured on Tuesday in Manhattan’s Times Square with his mother Martha Philpotts. The pair were in New York City for the unveiling of Page’s billboard in Times Square, promoting the memoir
Page’s billboard is pictured in Tuesday in Times Square
Page said that he knew from the age of four that he should have been born male
He tells of a date with a woman named Sara, in Manhattan, and Sara asking: ‘When did you know?’
Page writes: ‘I knew when I was four years old.
‘I went to the YMCA preschool in downtown Halifax, on South Park Street across from the Public Gardens.
‘Primarily, I understood that I wasn’t a girl. Not in a conscious sense, but in a pure sense, uncontaminated.
‘That sensation is one of my earliest and clearest memories.’
Page writes that he attempted to urinate standing up, feeling that was more natural.
‘I was perplexed by my experience, severed from the other girls, twists in my stomach when I gazed at them,’ he writes.
Page asked his mother, Martha Philpotts, a public school English and French teacher, at the age of six if he could be a boy.
She replied: ‘No hon, you can’t, you’re a girl. But you can do anything a boy can do.’
Page has claimed he had sex with Juno co-star Olivia Thirlby ‘all the time’ while they filmed the hit 2007 movie (pictured)
Page wrote of Thirlby: ‘It was on. I had an all-encompassing desire for her, she made me want in a way that was new, hopeful.’ He added it was one of the first times someone would make him orgasm (pictured together in 2007)
Page, pictured at the Oscars in March 2022, publicly came out as a transgender man in December 2020 but revealed he began ‘feeling like a boy’ from a young age
Page writes about multiple crushes on girls at school, and aged eight feeling a stirring while watching Sandra Bullock in the 1996 film Two If By Sea – which was filmed in Nova Scotia.
He writes of feeling ‘my heart aflutter for Sandra Bullock, my eight-year-old self not comprehending that I once again had a crush.
‘Twenty years later I would have dinner with my friend Catherine Keener and Sandra at the famous Craig’s in Beverly Hills.
‘Sandra looked so cool, in jeans and a hip rocker T. She was nice, funny and grounded, just as my eight-year-old self had imagined.
‘Oh, these strange roads we travel.’
Page also revealed he had a secret relationship with Kate Mara after he came out as gay in 2014 – and while she was dating Max Minghella (pictured 2017)
Page also details a terrifying episode when a pedophile stalker began following him, ultimately pursuing him for five years before he was arrested.
The saga began with his first television role, aged 11, in a CBC series called Pit Pony, which aired from February 1999.
‘At first, he became a friend, albeit a secret one,’ he writes. The stalker was in his 20s, and became a ‘covert pen pal’.
‘I had made a silly website in junior high school when we were learning about HTML in computer science class,’ Page writes.
‘The man who had seen me on CBC found the website and reached out through that.
‘Over the course of a few emails, a connection began to grow – a companionship.
‘We wrote of our grievances, our loneliness, our incongruence with our surroundings and with ourselves. Kid drama for me, something else for him.’
Page writes that he began ‘to express deeper feelings’ which made his stomach churn, but he did not want to lose a friend.
The man said he was coming to Halifax from Toronto, where he lived. Page eventually convinced him not to, and managed to distance himself.
Page remains one of the most high-profile transgender men in Hollywood
But when Page moved to Toronto himself, aged 16, he resurfaced – knowing that Page would be there.
‘The emails amped up. He would attach pictures of me with my eyes closed, and photoshop himself with massive angel wings above me, glaring down.’
The stalker captioned the image: ‘I’m going to c** on you in the clouds of heaven.’
He also sent Page links to missing children websites, and lyrics to the Creed song, ‘My sacrifice’.
Page told his friend and roommate Wiebke, and shortly after the stalker emailed Wiebke and multiple other friends, claiming to be a long-lost friend of Page’s and wanting his address to surprise him with a visit.
Page called the police, and the man was arrested.
When Page told his father Dennis, who had divorced his mother when Page was two, Dennis was furious at Page for allowing the man to contact him, and said: ‘I am going to come to Toronto and kick your ass.’
Page got a restraining order, and the man’s photo was shared with school mates and teachers.
Yet shortly after, the stalker found Page and confronted him in the street, stroking his shoulder in downtown Toronto as Page was walking to a subway station.
The stalker said to Page: ‘You look familiar.’
Page describes the abject terror, and certainty that he was about to be stabbed to death. The stalker tried to convince Page to come with him, but Page managed to scream, and the man ran away.
He was later arrested, and diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Page declined to press charges, and he agreed to live with his father and seek mental health treatment.
‘It all ended rather abruptly,’ Page writes.
‘And if there is a tiny morsel of goodness in all this, it’s that he was finally seen. He could now receive support for his pain.
‘I hope he got the help he needed, I hope he never did this again.’
Page says the episode increased his self-harm and eating disorders.
Page wrote that his father’s reaction was also something that traumatized him.
‘If I didn’t deserve care in that moment, if I didn’t deserve safety and love, when would I ever?’ he writes.
‘That sentence has lived in my body much longer than the man’s threats, his obsession, his fingers fondling my arm.’
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