Ellen Page
Ellen Page
Ellen Grace Philpotts-Page, known professionally as Ellen Page, is a Canadian actress. She started her career in Canada with roles in television shows including Pit Pony, Trailer Park Boys, and ReGenesis. Page then ventured into mainstream films, winning attention after starring in the 2005 drama Hard Candy, a role that won her the Austin Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress. Her breakthrough role was the title character in Jason Reitman's comedy film Juno, for which she received nominations for...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth21 February 1987
CityHalifax, Canada
CountryCanada
We became so close [with Rachel Evan Wood], in the process of leading up to making the film [Into the Forest ]. We were saying goodbye to each other, wrapping the film, and we knew we'd be seeing each other again.
I don't want to become unhealthily attached to what I do. I'm grateful for what I do, but I also want to be able to be OK when I'm not doing it.
When I was 5, someone thought it was smart to let me watch The People Under the Stairs. It might not have even been that scary, but I do remember skinned people in cages under the stairs and a man who lived in a wall without a tongue… and that’s why I cry after sex.
The relationships I've had with my girl friends are so powerful and meaningful. Without them I truly don't know what I'd do.
And I think it's really easy for people to point out hypocrisy in people's lives.
When I feel strongly about something, I'm not so quiet.
The thing I like about acting is being able to lose yourself completely in someone else.
I hate how box office failures are blamed on an actress, yet I don’t see a box office failure blamed on men. I think a lot of the time in films, men get roles where they create their own destiny and women are just tools, supporters for that. I guess it’s because we live in a patriarchal society, where feminism is a dirty word.
It's a beautiful book [Into the Forest], so for those who are thinking about reading it, they absolutely should. First and foremost, I just devoured it, as a story. At that time, and still, it just encompassed a lot of things that I was thinking about, and that the world is thinking about, with society's relationship to the environment, our personal relationship to it, and how disconnected we are from it, myself included.
I'd ice-skated before, because I'm Canadian and that's what you do as a kid, but I'd never, ever been on quad skates.
There are a lot of things I love about acting and one of the things I love the most is, here you are taking words off a page, working with someone you might have met just a week before, and somehow you're creating a moment that separates itself from space and time. You feel an incredible rush when you have that moment with another actor. You can feel it bounce off one another. Every take you do can reveal different things that were hiding. And things outside the story get revealed to you, too. It's an incredible way to work and to experience a story.
Regardless, for me, I feel a personal obligation and a social responsibility.
I was in a store in Halifax, Nova Scotia that I love, sort of like an environmental friendly sort of store. But they had a great book section. So I went in there all the time. The woman who worked there - which I feel so bad; I've forgotten her name - she handed me the book and she said, "Hey, you should read this. I think it would make a good movie." I remember reading the back of it and I was like, "Huh." Then I just devoured the book and I was so moved by it and said, "Why don't we start developing this into a film?" So that's how it [Into the Forest] all started.
I have trouble sometimes watching actors - even when they do a great job - with an accent.