When Juno turned a young Ellen Page into a rising Hollywood star, few people knew what was happening off-screen. In his memoir “Pageboy,” the actor — who’s now known as Elliot Page — describes a steamy relationship with one of his co-stars while filming the 2007 hit.
Before there was Elliot Page, there was Ellen – the young Canadian actor who stepped into the global spotlight in 2007 with Juno, the film about a sharp-witted teenager who decides to give her unborn baby to a couple struggling with infertility. The performance earned Page widespread critical praise and an Academy Award nomination.
At the time, Page – 20 when he played 16-year-old Juno – was privately wrestling with his identity while navigating the sudden pressures of fame, People reports.
Elliot’s on and off-screen transition
Years later, in 2014, Page publicly came out as gay and then, in December 2020, he shared another deeply personal update with the world.
“Hi friends, I want to share with you that I am trans, my pronouns are he/they and my name is Elliot,” Page wrote in a statement posted on social media. “I feel lucky to be writing this. To be here. To have arrived at this place in my life.”
Today, Page – now a trans man – is widely known for his impressive performances in films like Inception and the X-Men franchise, as well as for starring in the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy. In the show, his character debuted as Vanya Hargreeves in 2019 and returned as Viktor Hargreeves in season three, mirroring Page’s personal journey.
He also stepped behind the camera as a director with the documentary There’s Something in the Water.
‘First woman’
But the period when Juno was being filmed remains a pivotal moment in his life story – that’s where he met “the first woman” he had a “suitably consensual sexual relationship with.”
“I was taken aback the moment I saw Olivia Thirlby,” Page writes of his co-star, who played Juno’s outspoken best friend Leah.
Page, who earned an Oscar nod for his performance, added: “Embodied and bold, her long brown hair moved in slow motion. We were the same age, but she seemed so much older, capable, and centered. Sexually open, far removed from where I was at the time. But the chemistry was palpable, it pulled me in.”
Although he described himself as “embarrassingly shy” around Thirlby, explained that their friendship off screen eventually shifted into something more intimate.
“I’m really attracted to you,” Thirlby told him, Page recalled, adding then “we started sucking face. It was on.”
‘Having sex all the time’
From there, the relationship quickly intensified.
“We started having sex all the time: her hotel room, in our trailers at work, once in a tiny, private room in a restaurant. What were we thinking? We thought we were subtle,” Page said in an excerpt of his book.
Despite their closeness, Page said the relationship stayed hidden, and he was never sure whether his mother – who shared a room with him at the same Vancouver hotel during filming – suspected anything.
‘Helped my shame dissipate’
Looking back now, the actor says the experience carried a deeper emotional meaning than he fully understood at the time.
“Being intimate with Olivia helped my shame dissipate. I didn’t see a glint of it in her eyes and I wanted that – done feeling wretched about who I am,” he wrote.
Thirlby has also spoken openly about sexuality in the years since. The actor, who revealed in 2011 that she identifies as bisexual, said in an interview that it can be “difficult” for people to “love people in secret.”
“No one should have to hide their sexual orientation. Loving people is a necessary part of being human, and it is very difficult to love people in secret. It’s a horrible thing to force people to do,” said the 39-year-old star, according to Pride. “And I am not 100% straight.”
Thirlby, who appeared in 2023’s Oppenheimer, married Jacques Pienaar in 2014 after meeting him while working on the action film Dredd.
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