Ellen Page: Keeping it real in Tinseltown – The Globe and Mail

Globe and Mail UpdatePublished on Friday, Jul. 09, 2010 2:00PM EDTLast updated on Saturday, Jul. 10, 2010 11:03PM EDT

When Paul Gross was filming Wilby Wonderful, he slipped into a crowded room to catch a scene with Ellen Page – the then-16-year-old Haligonian with whom he shared very little screen time, but had been hearing a lot about.

“I remember watching her work, and being utterly mesmerized, thinking she’s one in a million,” says Gross. “such a rarity. an absolute natural. And I remember also thinking ‘I can’t wait to see how her career unfolds.’ ”

So well, in fact, it sounds almost apocryphal: First there were those juicy roles in psychologically wrought indie films – The Tracey Fragments, Hard Candy, An American Crime. Then came the kudos (that nice Oscar nom for Juno) and the celeb BFFs (Drew Barrymore, for one, who recruited her for Whip It). And, yes, she’s even done the superhero thing as a five-foot-nothing Kitty Pryde in X-Men: The Last Stand.

This summer, seven summers after shooting with Gross in Shelburne, N.S., comes Inception. it was filmed in six cities – from Tokyo to Tangiers – for a nice little budget of $160-million. it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard and Michael Caine. The director: Chris (Batman) Nolan. Touted as a thriller set in “the architecture of the mind,” it features Page as an architecture student recruited to join a corporate espionage team that infiltrates billionaires’ dreams.

She crafts the dreamscapes.

Still, none of this seems to faze the girl from Hal Town, as she calls it. She’ll now suffer the red-carpet thing in a black dress. She’s moved on to Los Angeles. (When we speak, she’s rifling through boxes in her latest apartment there.) but for the most part, she refuses to play the celebrity game, and is rarely snapped by the paparazzi. As the ever-articulate 23-year-old insists, “The quality most important to me, in the films I make, is honesty.”

So much actor-speak, one might assume. Except that she’s credited by a slew of directors – Nolan, as well as Canadian directors Bruce McDonald and Daniel MacIvor, to name a few – for always showing up with her A-game.

For all the raves, though, the pint-sized Page says she’s a bundle of nerves before the cameras start rolling. “I feel as if I have forgotten how to do it, or that I have been pulling the wool over peoples' eyes,” she says with a chuckle. “Typically, though, I come around, and realize I need to forget about myself, and ego, and just dive in.”

Cotillard, DiCaprio and Page.

She has certainly got solid experience. Acting since age 10 – her debut role was in the Canadian-made TV series Pit Pony – Page has chosen parts that might make other actors cringe: castrating a pedophile in David Slade’s Hard Candy; starving herself to play a young girl who is starved to death in An American Crime (prompting director Tommy O’Haver to beg her to eat).

But even since the big studios came calling after her Oscar moment, Page says she chooses projects, big and small, that have that integral honesty. A message. A heart. A soul.

And Inception is no exception to her rule. for all the blockbuster hype, this is an intellectual thriller. Her character, Ariadne, appeals to Page because the woman is plucky, smart and an equal match for an all-guy team of corporate spies led by DiCaprio.

“She is intelligent and ambitious, and has this innate intellectual curiosity that I am jealous of,” says Page, who tends to speak quickly. “Oh, and she is pretty brave – and I am a chicken.”

Nolan, who also wrote this film, disagrees about that last part.

“it was very important to me that there be a conduit for the audience – a character who is being shown this world for the first time and is eager to explore it,” he says. “When I met Ellen, she had the perfect combination of freshness, and savvy and a maturity beyond her years. She is an extraordinary performer with incredible creativity and an innate curiosity of her own, and therefore naturally infused Ariadne with those qualities.”

She kicks butt, too. The stunts and special effects – which take place everywhere from a skyscraper in Tokyo to Fortress Mountain in Calgary to the picturesque streets of Paris and London – have wowed audiences at early screenings. And Page, who gets knocked around pretty good, says she had a blast doing her own stunts.

“I just really enjoy the challenge, and feeling outside my comfort zone,” says the self-described tomboy (who did stunts as a roller-derby queen in Whip It). “I guess the most difficult part of Inception, for me, was being up in the mountains in Alberta, because I got pretty affected by altitude. not to mention, it was damn cold.”

Having Nolan managing the action helped. “he is just so freaking talented and creates a comfortable environment on set,” she says. “despite the scale of this production, and days where so much was going on, he always found time for every actor. he wants every moment to be honest.”

That word again. It’s an ideal that comes up when Page gushes about her co-stars, too: Cotillard “just breathes authenticity”; DiCaprio “proved you could be a ‘young stud’ and an artist.”

Blame all this realness, this groundedness on her East Coast upbringing, perhaps. or her parents, a teacher and a graphic designer.

“Ellen is one of those rare actors who doesn’t manufacture – she exposes,” says the Cape Breton-born MacIvor, who directed her as a teenager in Wilby Wonderful. “She manages to show something of herself inside these characters, which makes them totally believable. I think a lot of her success has to do with her natural ability, combined with her upbringing and education as well.”

McDonald, who filmed Page in The Tracey Fragments, agrees. “Ellen commits herself wholly and completely to a part,” he says. “She is a great collaborator who is not only able to see her part in the movie, but she’s able to see the whole story. Plus, she’s a sweetheart and a charmer.”

MacIvor points out yet another thing that Page – unlike scores of other young actors (we mean you, LiLo) – just intrinsically gets right. “you don’t find out a lot of stuff about her personal life, or see pictures of her coming out of bars. She’s clearly not caught up in this ridiculous wave of celebrity. She takes her work seriously, and has a social conscience.”

It sounds plausible. In the middle of showbiz interviews, Page plugs books like Eaarth by Bill McKibben: “it talks about the impact of climate change completely and honestly.” (Yes, yes, that word.)

To unwind, she likes to relax with close friends, take long walks, camp.

And now that she’s done her latest round of projects – a TV show for HBO called Stitch N’ Bitch; another dark comedy called Super, where she plays a girl named Libby who is a “socio- hinging on the psychopath”; and an HBO pilot called Tilda with Diane Keaton – she hopes to head home to Halifax “to enjoy some Nova Scotian summer.”

“The bottom line is, my life is pretty boring,” she says. “I don't go out much. for me, going out is a personal event and triumph, and it’s usually for a concert or something. I just am myself, which is low-key.”

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Tags: american crime, juno, Leonardo DiCaprio, screen time, x men the last stand

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