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Elliot Page Shares 'Healing Experience' Of Playing Trans Man In New Improvised Drama Close To You
Elliot Page, the acclaimed actor known for his roles in Juno and The Umbrella Academy, has opened up about the profound personal impact of his latest film, Close to You.
Elliot Page is one of the highly acclaimed actors for films like Juno and Inception and as Viktor Hargreeves in Netflix's The Umbrella Academy. In a recent interview, he shared a very personal and pivotal transformation he has been through regarding his recent lead role in Close to You, a new film by Dominic Savage. This character has been able to heal deep emotional parts of himself, especially because it allowed him to show his complexity on screen.
Close to You is just one of the projects that Page has chosen that carry more personal importance for him since coming out as a trans man in 2020. The story follows Sam, a recently transitioned man, back to his hometown for the first time in the hope of reaching out to his family. The storyline is based on the anxiety of Sam being reunited with those that he loves and the reaction of those people to the new Sam.
As Page noted himself, this role would have been impossible to undertake before his transition: "There is no way. that I would have been able to feel comfortable and present and grounded enough to actually exist and create that openly."
Playing Sam allowed Page to tap into emotions parallel to experiences he has lived through, which was cathartic in many ways. There was the discussed joy he felt every day upon arrival to the set. "For me, waking up every day so excited to go to set that, to me, was a big, big healing experience," Page said, showing how much he got from the role. The film follows Sam's return to the small Canadian town, old memories confronted, love rekindled, and strengthened familial bonds in the process of maturing into himself with gained confidence.
Dominic Savage's very unique approach to the storytelling in this film involved a great deal of improvisation, which both intrigued and intimidated Page. Known for doing Channel 4's I Am. In this series, Savage lets the actors take over their characters. Page confessed that he did not know if he was going to do it, but on the set, he felt so supported in letting those improvisation scenes just happen. The more they have been shooting these long takes, he said, sometimes up to 53 minutes, both challenging and intoxicating. "It's not normal as an actor working in film that you do a 23-minute take, 40-minute take. You get to go, and go, and go, and it was just an absolute joy."
Savage felt that because of the "effortless" partnership, it was the best thing that could have happened due to fate itself. Immediately, he and Page clicked as both loved personal narratives. "It almost felt like it was meant to happen," Savage said, putting an accent on the organic nature of their collaboration. Page herself knew his work and appreciated the director's approach, along with the natural connection they both shared: "We really just connected, connected with similar tastes, reasons why we like to make things, and that's really how it all began."
Close to You also features a gentle romance between Sam and Katherine, played by deaf actress Hillary Baack. The romance was written via improvisation; Baack said there were no rehearsals so that authentic moments of connection could occur. "It was really exciting to see what happened when we were able to just jump into the moment and just be on a journey through it together and find those moments of truth and of being human," she says. The complexity of their love story is within the unsaid emotions and in sharing feelings of being outsiders. Through all of these, the relationship between Sam and Katherine is pure and touching to the human core, breaking the barriers that would naturally appear to disconnect them.
ALSO READ: What Is Elliot Page’s Net Worth in 2024? Find Out As Umbrella Academy Comes to an End
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