For Elliot Page, happiness is living as his authentic self.
"I can't overstate the biggest joy, which is really seeing yourself," he said in an interview for Esquire's summer issue. "I know I look different to others, but to me I'm just starting to look like myself. It's indescribable, because I'm just like, there I am. And thank God. Here I am."
Before his transition, Elliot didn't think he'd ever feel this peace. "The greatest joy is just being able to feel present, literally, just to be present," the Umbrella Academy star continued. "To go out in a group of new people and be able to engage in a way where I didn't feel this constant sensation to flee from my body, this never-ending sensation of anxiety and nervousness and wanting out. When I say I couldn't have ever imagined feeling that way, I mean that with every sense of me."
Elliot came out as transgender in a message posted to social media in December 2020. "I didn't expect it to be so big," he recalled to the magazine. "In terms of the actual quality of the response, it was what I expected: love and support from many people and hatred and cruelty and vitriol from so many others. I came out as gay in 2014, and it's different. Transphobia is just so, so, so extreme. The hatred and the cruelty is so much more incessant."
This wasn't the first time Elliot had experienced hate. During the interview, the actor recalled being bullied at school. He also remembered feeling "so inordinately distraught" after his soccer team was divided up into boys' and girls' leagues.
"I was crying to my mum, 'Please, one more year, one more year!'" Elliot said. "When I was playing with the boys—soccer, touch football, out back during recess and lunch—I was having a blast. They did let me play one more year, then I had to go to the girls' team. I looked like the other boys, which I was. I'd be on the field about to kick the ball when a ref would say, ‘I don't think boys are allowed to play on this team.' I still played soccer for years, but a lot of love for it was not there."
In addition, he shared painful memories from the early days of his career. For instance, he said he was forced to wear a dress to the premiere of his 2007 movie Juno at the Toronto International Film Festival.
"I can't pinpoint a 'worst' day," Elliot said. "But when Juno was blowing up—this sounds strange to people, and I get that people don't understand. 'Oh, f--k you, you're famous, and you have money, and you had to wear a dress, boo-hoo.' I don't not understand that reaction. But that's mixed with: I wish people would understand that that s--t literally did almost kill me."
Elliot also said he could "pretty much not leave whatever hotel" he was staying in when he was filming the 2010 movie Inception.
"I struggled with food. Intense depression, anxiety, severe panic attacks. I couldn't function," he shared. "There were days when I'd only have one meeting, and I'd leave my house to go to the meeting and have to turn around. Not being able to get through a script—could not. Reading is one of my favorite things to do—I couldn't read, couldn't get through a paragraph."
Today, Elliot is happily living as his true self and continues to use his platform to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community, receiving the annual achievement award at Outfest in Los Angeles last year.
"Now more than ever, it is so important for our voices to be amplified and represented in film and media," he said in a statement, "and for people to hear our stories."