Elliot Web page says he bought shingles filming 'Inception' as a result of he 'felt misplaced' in a 'forged filled with cis males' together with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy

  • Elliot Web page stated he got here down with shingles as a result of stress whereas taking pictures “Inception” at age 22.
  • Web page was confused by his casting within the film and was additionally coping with “chaos” in his private life.
  • “Shingles communicated the stress my physique felt, what my phrases couldn’t,” he wrote in his memoir.

Elliot Web page stated he got here down with a case of shingles whereas taking pictures “Inception” as a result of he was struggling excessive ranges of stress whereas engaged on the challenge and making an attempt to navigate “chaos” in his private life.

Writing in his new memoir “Pageboy,” which was launched Tuesday, the actor, who performed Ariadne within the 2010 sci-fi movie, stated that “shingles communicated the stress my physique felt” whereas on set.

Shingles — also called herpes zoster — is an an infection that manifests as a painful rash and usually seems like a strip of blisters however can even trigger signs together with chills, fever, complications, and imaginative and prescient loss.

“Shingles popped out of my backbone whereas filming ‘Inception’ once I was twenty-two,” he wrote.

“Regardless of everybody being pleasant to work with, I felt misplaced,” he wrote of the Christopher Nolan-directed film, including: “In a forged filled with cis males, I didn’t perceive the function I discovered myself in.” 

“For the primary two weeks of the movie I joked I might be recast with Keira Knightley, and rightfully so,” he continued.

Within the movie, Web page portrayed an structure scholar who’s recruited by Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to be a part of their crew, together with Eames (Tom Hardy) and Yusuf (Dileep Rao). His character’s particular job is to assemble the dreamscapes.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Elliot Page in "Inception" (2010).

Web page performed Ariadne within the 2010 sci-fi movie, alongside DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb.

Stephen Vaughan – © 2010 Warner Bros. Leisure Inc.



Web page shot the film greater than a decade earlier than he underwent his gender transition from feminine to male. It was additionally earlier than he had introduced publicly that he (whereas nonetheless presenting as feminine) was drawn to ladies.

He described the confusion and stress he was feeling whereas navigating closeted relationships with different ladies. On the time, Web page was secretly relationship a lady who was “out, and surrounded by a neighborhood of queer ladies” whereas he was nonetheless conserving his sexuality a secret.

He recalled: “I used to be not settled, I nonetheless felt misplaced, stirring up the mud. A pinball of projection, I internalized the chaos. It left me feeling bereft of hope.” 

Elliot Page at the 2022 Oscars.

Elliot Web page, pictured right here on the 2022 Oscars, got here out as a trans man in December 2020.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Photos



“My physique hoarded the unexamined feelings, sensations, desires, and desires,” he wrote. “Straightforward sentences ready in my mind, caught. They had been seen to me, written out, I heard the voice however my mouth refused to cooperate. Simply the tick tick tick of the windup toy, or nothing in any respect.”

Analysis suggests that prime ranges of psychological stress can improve the chance of shingles as a lot as two instances for males.

Shingles is attributable to the identical virus as chickenpox and so having had chickenpox places you vulnerable to getting shingles sooner or later.

As soon as you’ve got had chickenpox, the virus lives dormant in your physique, your immune system conserving it from manifesting once more, except the immune system is weakened which may occur with some therapies — similar to chemotherapy — or diseases — similar to HIV.

The immune system will also be weakened by stress, which Web page stated could have been the case for him. It is because stress causes a struggle or flight response within the physique and cortisol — the stress hormone — suppresses the immune system.

“Pageboy” by Elliot Web page is out now.

Related Posts