Pageboy

Two months before the world premiere of Juno, Elliot Page walks into his first queer bar and asks a woman if he can kiss her. She says yes, in front of everyone. For Elliot it is an experience he once thought out of reach, and the start of understanding himself as a queer and trans person.

Pageboy is a memoir. Juno makes Elliot one of the most loved actors in the world, and the career he had used as an escape into imagination becomes a source of dread. He is pushed to play a glossy young starlet, a part that makes his skin crawl both on set and off it.

The book follows him through criticism and abuse from powerful people in Hollywood, a past that keeps catching up with him, and a society intent on fitting him into a binary. For long stretches he says nothing, unsure what to do, until he decides he has had enough.

Expect behind-the-scenes detail from film sets alongside frank, personal reflection on sex, love, trauma and the film industry. It is an intimate account of a life pushed close to breaking, told with defiance and joy as Elliot sheds other people's expectations.