She’s become something of a poster girl for gay Hollywood since coming out earlier this year, but Ellen Page says she broke an unspoken rule of the movie business by revealing she’s a lesbian.
The actress is one of four stars on the cover of different issues of* Out* magazine (Zachary Quinto, Sam Smith and OITNB’s Samira Wiley are the other three) and she discusses her decision to make the announcement during the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to Thrive conference in February.
Her choice to disclose her sexuality was at odds with her career as an actress, she says, and although it was never a ‘direct order’ that she should hide who she truly was, she says there’s an unspoken rule in the film industry that prevented her from being herself: ‘No one’s ever been so direct as to say, “You’re gay, so we’re gonna hide it,”’ she told the magazine.
‘But there’s an unspoken thing going on. [People] believe it’s the right thing to do for your career. They don’t realise it’s eroding your soul. It was eventually about me being like, “Wait, why am I listening to that? At what point did I let those things become important?”’
She couldn’t even enjoy the success that came with her breakout role in Juno, since she couldn’t celebrate it with her first girlfriend, whom she met right after the movie came out.
It was around that time she started working on producing Freeheld, a movie she’s currently shooting opposite Julianne Moore. It's based on the true story of a lesbian couple, Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree. After Hester is diagnosed with cancer, her partner was denied the right to receive her pension. The subject is something Ellen feels very passionate about:
‘There’s no getting around the unfairness that happened here, and just how illogical and almost psychopathic it felt. And it’s so exciting to get to do a love story with the sex that you actually fall for. I’m thrilled about it,’ she says.
With a lot of gay-centric movies and TV shows popping up, Ellen muses on the concept that LGBTQ content is now trendy, commenting: ‘Even if it did become a trend, who cares, right? Let being yourself become a trend.’
Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.