Elliot Page feels like he can finally just be himself.
The Canadian actor speaks to Esquire for their summer issue on what he has learned from transitioning, telling the magazine: “I can’t overstate the biggest joy, which is really seeing yourself. 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. So the greatest joy is just being able to feel present, literally, just to be present.
“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,” he adds.
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Page shares of the reaction to his transition, “I didn’t expect it to be so big. 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.”
Elsewhere in the candid interview, Page talks about his love of working out: “I’ve never worked out more in my life. Working out always felt like such a conundrum, because it didn’t feel good. I walked and I hiked, but that was it. The experience of being in my body now is so different. I’m absolutely hooked.
“The feeling of being really engaged with it, present, pushing it and getting stronger and gaining weight. It’s thrilling. I feel like a kid doing it.”
READ MORE: Elliot Page’s ‘The Umbrella Academy’ Character To Come Out As Trans In New Season
He adds of starring in “The Umbrella Academy”: “I love making ‘The Umbrella Academy’. I’ve learned how special it is to play one character for so long, to evolve with a family of characters.
“All of us have gone through a lot. Years have gone by, and we’ve changed and grown in our own ways. I love watching the growth happen alongside the show, our personalities interweaving and all of us having our own moments. I’m just learning to love the whole journey of it.”
The full interview is on Esquire and in the new summer issue, available everywhere by June 7.
