Elliot Page says he got sick on Inception due to stress of feeling ‘out of place in a cast of cis men’

Elliot Page has said he got sick while filming Inception due to the stress of feeling “out of place”.

The actor, who has just published a new memoir, Pageboy, played Ariadne in Christopher Nolan’s 2010 blockbuster alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy and Cillian Murphy.

Page wrote in the memoir that he came down with a case of shingles, which “popped out of my spine” during the film’s shoot. The actor believes this was caused due to stress at being part of “a cast full of cis men”.

“Despite everyone being delightful to work with, I felt out of place...I did not understand the role I found myself in,” Page wrote.

“For the first two weeks of the film, I joked I would be recast with Keira Knightley, and rightfully so,” he added.

Page filmed Inception over a decade before undergoing his gender transition, and years before he told the public he was attracted to women. He referred to this as a “chaotic” time.

“My body hoarded the unexamined emotions, sensations, wants, and needs. Easy sentences prepared in my brain, stuck,” he wrote.

“They were visible to me, written out, I heard the voice but my mouth refused to cooperate. Just the tick tick tick of the windup toy, or nothing at all.”

Also in Page’s memoir, titled Pageboy, the actor recalled being verbally assaulted at a party by an A-list actor two months after he came out as gay.

He said an actor, who was an “acquaintance”, told him: “You aren’t gay. That doesn’t exist. You are just afraid of men. I’m going to f*** you to make you realise you aren’t gay.”

Page also claimed that he and his Juno co-star Olivia Thirlby “started having sex all the time” after an intense makeout session while filming the 2007 movie.

He also claimed to have been in a secret relationship with fellow actor Kate Mara while she was dating Max Minghella.

In an excerpt shared with People, Page wrote that Mara was “the first person I fell for after my heart was broken”. He noted that the House of Cards actor “had a boyfriend at the time, the lovely and talented Max Minghella”.

However, he said Minghella was supportive of them exploring their feelings for one another. “I never thought I could be in love with two people and now I know I can,” Page said Mara told him.

Pageboy is out now.