Ellen Page is not afraid to give some real talk and that’s exactly what she did in this month’s issue of Flare. Now that she’s out, she’s serving Hollywood the truth about being a gay actor and what kind of double standards she faces in the industry.
“The more time went by, the more something just happened, an Oh my god-I want to love someone freely and walk down the street and hold my girlfriend’s hand,” Ellen tells the magazine. She admits she was nervous about publicly coming out during a videotaped HRC speech, though she’s been out to her family she was 19.
“I was very nervous. I was very nervous, yes. Yes. Very, very nervous. Yes. I was emotional, deeply, deeply emotional,” she said. “You think you’re in a place where you’re all ‘I’m thrilled to be gay, I have no issues about being gay anymore, I don’t feel shame about being gay,’ but you actually do. You’re just not fully aware of it. I think I still felt scared about people knowing. I felt awkward around gay people; I felt guilty for not being myself.”
Flare notes that Ellen is currently single and will “always be happy to talk about being gay.”
“You hear things like, ‘People shouldn’t know about your life because you’re creating an illusion on-screen,'” she says, “But I don’t see other actresses going to great lengths to hide their heterosexuality. That’s an unfair double standard.”
And yet, one that persists because more queer actors are not as brave as Ellen. And even though she’s received some homophobia thrown her way (including from a pastor she met on a plane), Ellen has had many more positive interactions than not.
“I expected so much more hate,” she says. “It was just remarkably positive, which is beautiful, because it’s indicative of the change that’s happening.”
The interview also gives us some great news: Freeheld will finally begin shooting this fall. Ellen is currently in pre-production on Into the Forest, co-starring out bisexual actress Evan Rachel Wood and directed by out lesbian filmmaker Patricia Rozema. She’ll be in theaters in May, though, when she reprises her role as Kitty Pryde in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
One other positive in Ellen’s coming out: She feels free to dress however the hell she wants. She said how thrilled she was to wear the Saint Laurent tux by Hedi Slimane to the Vanity Fair Oscars party just days after her speech, and how her work with stylist Samantha McMillen means she no longer feels the pressure to conform and wear dresses on the red carpet.
“I felt happy and confident and the difference was huge,” she says of her Slimane tux. She looked stunning, and it’s even better knowing she felt it, too.
