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Ellen Page's Not So Still Life
Canadian newcomer gets Oscar buzz Juno
Ellen Page, Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons star in Jason Reitman's Juno (2007).
Don’t misunderstand: It’s not like Ellen Page is hiding out or lying low. But even as the Oscar-hype machinery is revving up to push her toward a well-deserved nomination for her star-making performance in Jason Reitman’s Juno—well, she’d simply prefer to be on the other side of the continent, far away from Hollywood, on this particular October afternoon.
“I’m really very grateful for the way things are going for me right now,” says Page. “I mean, really, it all feels very surreal.” Starting with her breakthrough turn as a 14-year-old girl who entraps a pedophile in Hard Candy (2005) and continuing with her portrayal of a wryly self-possessed unwed mother in Juno, “I’ve gotten to play roles that I’ve been extremely passionate about. And I’ve had the ability to make decisions and have choices.”
But all the attention Page has received is a tricky thing to handle. The daughter of a teacher mother and graphic designer father, Page has been acting since the age of 10 in her native Canada. Yet even when she was appearing in a popular late-’90s TV series (the family-friendly “Pit Pony”) up in the Great White North, she didn’t feel nearly so scrutinized.
Under such circumstances, she admits, “I think you can lose your equilibrium. But I think that has a lot to do with how you personally choose to handle it. I mean, I have my own place in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and that’s where I like to spend my free time. I think being here where I’m from—which is a small city on the east coast of Canada—there’s just a different mentality here. I think if I jumped ship and went to L.A., well, sometimes you can easily get absorbed.”
At 20, Page continues to think of herself as a student of her craft. She admits that whenever she works with someone she admires—say, Catherine Keener (her co-star in An American Crime) or Dennis Quaid (with whom she appears in Smart People, premiering at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival), she’s a close study because she still has much to learn.
“It’s not like I’m consciously examining them,” she says. “But I have to say that I take away a lot from every job I do—as an actor and as a person. It’s not like I’m star-struck, because for me human beings are human beings. But when it comes to working with someone like Catherine Keener… Well, look, when you’re in the moment, I feel like I’m just there to do my job. But in retrospect, I was like, ‘Oh, my God! I got to work with Catherine Keener!’”
During the filming of An American Crime, in which Page plays a troubled teen imprisoned and tormented by Keener’s sadistic suburban housewife, Page was impressed by her co-star’s ability to endure the day-to-day psychic pressures of playing a monstrous character. (“Of course,” she jokes, “I didn’t have it so easy, either.”) While making Smart People, Page learned how much can be accomplished when you don’t appear to be doing much of anything.
“I think Dennis is fantastic in Smart People,’” Page says of Quaid, “and a lot of it has to do with how he’s not afraid to be still and subtle. It was really interesting to watch him play this character, because he alters himself—but in an extremely subtle way. It was like, the more I would work with him, the more I would notice it. And I think stillness really isn’t a thing that’s explored a lot in movies.
“I think that’s why François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows is one of my favorite movies. Because it’s extremely fluid, and not forced. You have this performance by [young Jean-Pierre Léaud] who’s not judging or being analytical about the process—he’s just being.”
Page aimed to instill a similar stillness in her portrayal of Juno, a precociously clever teen who is wise beyond her years but occasionally in over her head. “Juno is just so completely not apologetic,” she says. “She never feels like she has to explain herself, and I actually have a lot of respect for that. She decides to tackle what often can be seen as this horrible, demonized, over-dramatized situation in a way that is levelheaded and, I find, extremely mature.”
Getting back to The 400 Blows for a second: Does Page think that, like the best of Truffaut’s work, Juno works so splendidly because, in addition to its other qualities, it’s so scrupulously nonjudgmental regarding its characters?
“Definitely—and I can relate to that, because I am trying to be the least judgmental as possible as I learn and grow. I think that when a film does that, it’s really, really beautiful.”
Juno is in theaters now. Smart People will premiere at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and be released by Miramax on April 11, 2008.
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This story was published in the Winter 2008 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Ellen Page's (Not So) Still Life
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