Before coming out, Ellen Page says she was living a double life — one that was taking its toll on her sanity.
In an interview with The Guardian, Page says she was “lying by omission” by not admitting to the world that she was gay. So in 2014, she publicly came out at a Las Vegas convention for gay rights, telling the crowd, "I am here today because I am gay. And because maybe I can make a difference. To help others have an easier and more hopeful time."
It was also a way for her to clear her conscience, since Page says she felt guilty for pretending to be someone she wasn't — especially since she was benefiting from her omission.
“I had got to the point where I was telling myself, you know, you should feel guilty about this," she told The Guardian. "I was an active participant in an element of Hollywood that is gross. I would never judge somebody else for not coming out, but for me, personally, it did start to feel like a moral imperative.”
Page understands the fear that comes with coming out. That it will lead to less work, but "being out within my life became far more important than being in any movie.”
Now, Page is taking on a new role as the co-host of new Vice series, Gaycation, with her friend, Ian Daniel — a gay man from Indiana that the actress calls her "soul twin." The show (her idea) has the two traveling to different parts of the world where being gay can be a scary thing, like Jamaica, Japan, and Brazil, where she met with a man who proudly speaks of killing gay people.
"He said things like, ‘If I’m in my car and I see a gay person, I run them over,'" Page told The Guardian. "The moment he walked into the room, it felt like a black hole sucking something out of me. I haven’t experienced anything like it. He didn’t know that we were gay.”
But one of the hardest moments of the show was being in the room while one young man decided to come out to his mother. The man asked Page to share her story of how she came out, and in her opinion, it gets away from the point of the show.
"If it’s me talking about myself, it makes me cringe a little," Page told The Guardian. "The goal is to go and look at the LGBT culture, at the joy and the liberation."
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