In 2010, three years after making a splash in Juno, Elliot Page starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception, Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to The Dark Knight. While the movie itself was a critical and commercial success, Page didn’t have a good time working on it. The actor recalled how he got shingles while working on Inception as a result of feeling “out of place” among the other attached talent.
Page has a memoir called Pageboy that just came out, and along with discussing topics like when he dated Fantastic Four actress Kate Mara, he went over his time on Inception, where he played Ariadne, the architecture student whom DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb recruits for the main dream heist. The movie was shot from June 2009 to the following November, and during that time, Page said that “shingles communicated the stress” his body felt on the set. In his words (via Insider):
Shingles popped out of my spine while filming 'Inception' when I was twenty-two.
Along with the aforementioned Juno, Elliot Page was also well known at this time for playing Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand, among other film and TV appearances, but the shingles came at a time when he was not only dealing with stress from working on Inception, but also navigating the “chaos” of his personal life. As far the professional aspect of this went, Page continued by saying how he didn’t feel like he belonged with the other actors, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy and Michael Caine:
Despite everyone being delightful to work with, I felt out of place. In a cast full of cis men, I did not understand the role I found myself in. For the first two weeks of the film I joked I would be recast with Keira Knightley, and rightfully so.
As for the personal aspect of Elliot Page’s struggles during the Inception portion of his career, this not only came more than a decade before his gender transition, but also before he’d announced he was attracted to women while still assigned as a woman. As such, Page was still in the closet and engaged in secret relationships with women. This led to him being “not settled,” and he “internalized the chaos,” which left him “feeling bereft of hope.” The immediate years after Inception’s release saw him appearing in movies like To Rome with Love, Touchy Feely and X-Men: Days of Future Past.
These days, Page is in a better stage of mind, namely as a result of coming out as a transgender man in 2020. In April, he opened up about getting to wear a tuxedo on the red carpet for the first time, a sharp contrast from when he was forced to wear a dress for the Juno premiere. Then in May, he kicked off the summer with a shirtless post, saying how grateful he for for what gender affirming care allowed him. As far as his work nowadays goes, Page will return as Viktor Hargreeves for the fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy, which is viewable with a Netflix subscription. Unfortunately, Inception doesn’t have a streaming home at the moment, so if you’re interested in revisiting it right now, you’ll need to purchase a physical or digital copy.
Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more news about what’s going on with Elliot Page. You can also keep track of the rest of this year’s cinematic entertainment with our 2023 movie release schedule.
