WATCH: Ellen Page talks about her coming out experience on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
TORONTO — Canadian actress Ellen Page, who came out publicly in February, said this week she feels like a burden has been lifted.
Appearing on an episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show that aired Thursday, the 27-year-old Halifax native said delivering her coming out speech made her “the most nervous I’ve ever been in my life.”
“I was so ready to do it and, quite frankly, so excited to do it,” Page recalled, “so it was a combination of just such thrill to finally be at that place in my life where I was able to do that, and grateful to have that moment.”
Page credited Degeneres, who came out publicly in 1997, with paving the way.
“You did it at a time where it was much harder and much scarier,” said Page.
The actress said she is happier than ever. “Just an ease and comfort,” she said, “and it’s really been quite extraordinary to feel just the shift.
“I was carrying a tremendous amount of shame and guilt for not being out, and I felt isolated from the LGBT community, and now I don’t.”
Page also talked about her coming out experience in an interview that appears in the June issue of Flare.
“The more time went by, the more something just happened, an ‘Oh my god—I want to love someone freely and walk down the street and hold my girlfriend’s hand,'” she explained.
“I was very nervous. I was very nervous, yes. Yes. Very, very nervous. Yes. I was emotional, deeply, deeply emotional.”
Page told the magazine she told her parents she was gay when she was 19 — but wasn’t fully able to come to terms with it.
“You think you’re in a place where you’re all ‘I’m thrilled to be gay, I have no issues about being gay anymore, I don’t feel shame about being gay,’ but you actually do. You’re just not fully aware of it,” she said. “I think I still felt scared about people knowing. I felt awkward around gay people; I felt guilty for not being myself.”
Page told Flare she was surprised by the reaction.
“I expected so much more hate,” she said. “It was just remarkably positive, which is beautiful, because it’s indicative of the change that’s happening.”
Page, whose films include Juno and Inception, is part of the cast of the made-in-Montreal X-Men: Days of Future Past, out May 23.
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