The photo is without artifice. A seated man wears a white tank top, which reveals bulging biceps, and a silver chain around his neck. He’s in his thirties, short hair shaved to the side, full, contoured lips. In the determined and gentle gaze of the model, the Canadian actor Elliot Page, there is a mixture of challenge and a certain melancholy. The image is by Catherine Opie, photographer and LGBT activist, and appears on the cover of pageboy, the comedian’s autobiography, which comes out in France on June 7, the title of which is a play on words between his surname and the word pageboy meaning “servant”. For months, the book has been the subject of real expectation. Rumors are circulating about the amount of the multi-million dollar contract (the exact sum remains confidential) with Flatiron Books, a subsidiary of the American publishing giant Macmillan. And the book is being translated into fifteen languages.
Elliot Page’s career, which spans more than two decades, is marked by a few successes: Juno, of Jason Reitman, in 2007 (which earned him an Oscar nomination), roles with Christopher Nolan (Inception), Drew Barrymore (Bliss), two parts of the X-Men saga (The Final Showdown, Days of Future Past)… In the credits of all these films, he appears under another name: that of Ellen Page, his birth name, given by his parents, he who was born in the body of a girl. This is how he came to be known publicly, as a popular actress in Hollywood, not a huge star but an identifiable personality. Until this day of December 2020, and, on instagrama long message without a photo which began as follows: “Hello friends, I would like to announce that I am trans, my pronouns are he/him and my first name is Elliot. »
In the process, he gives the American press a few interviews, evoking his years of personal and psychological wandering, and the long process which led him to make this announcement, and to declare that he is living with gender dysphoria. Either “psychic distress resulting from an incongruity between [le] anatomical sex and [l’]gender identity » of a person, according to the DSM-5, the reference work of international psychiatry. Eating disorders, depression, anxiety or scarification are some of the symptoms that result from this “incongruity”. Not all trans people suffer from it, but Elliot Page has had a painful experience of it.
In pageboy, subtitled in French “Self-portrait of an artist”, the actor hides nothing of the episodes of great depression which punctuated his life. His childhood, his parents’ divorce, his complicated relationship with his mother-in-law and his father, his passionate loves with more or less benevolent partners… Elliot Page has a raw verb, and the obvious concern to speak loudly and frankly. He points to the brutal conformism of the film industry and the intolerance of Western society. A small kick in the anthill, but nothing very exceptional: the confessions of actors and actresses burned in the flame of success are legion, in Hollywood.
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