Elliot Page details 'traumatic' sexual incident on set of 'Hard Candy': 'I thought you just get over it and move on'

In the 2005 film Hard Candy, Elliot Page plays a teenage vigilante seeking revenge on a sexual predator. But as revealed in his new memoir Pageboy, the then-17-year-old actor was subjected to unwanted sexual advances by a member of the film's production team.

Page, now 36, recounts an incident involving a male crew member who gave him a ride home.

"His voice sweet, his hands on my shoulders, he guided me to the bedroom," the trans star writes in the book. "I went stiff. Unsure what to do as he stood tall and removed his glasses. He laid me down on the bed."

According to Page, the man removed his pants and proceeded to perform oral sex on him. "I froze," Page, who came out as trans in 2020, writes. "After it was over, he tried to stay in the bed with me. I had thawed marginally and told him he couldn't, to get out."

In a new interview with the Guardian, Page discussed the "traumatic" incident, and how it affected him throughout his life.

"Apart from the power conversation and the toxicity that comes with that, it is just being a young person who's in a space with lots of adults and in situations where people took … I don't even know the word. I was about to say 'advantage' or 'awful advantage,' but that just feels gross," Page recalls. "I almost don’t have the words for it because it’s so f***ing hard to wrap my head around why somebody wants to do that."

In Page's book, he also wrote about a separate incident involving an advance by a female crew member he worked with on a different project. Page and the unidentified female were house-hunting when Page said he was grabbed.

"I was standing in the empty living room, in front of the couch, when I felt her grab me. She pressed her face into mine, some version of kissing," he writes. "That freezing coming over me again. The next thing I knew I was on the rug, the floor firm on my back. I didn’t say no, I did not resist, I just stiffened."

Page also noted that one director groomed him as a teenager, stroking his thigh under the table during dinner. The director told Page, "You have to make the move, I can't."

Looking back, Page says he never discussed the incidents with anyone because he had come to view it as the norm in Hollywood.

"I didn't know how to talk to people about it. I thought you just get over it and move on," he told the Guardian. It was only a while later that he found the ability to "sit and fully talk about these experiences or acknowledge that they were traumatic and had a significant impact on me." Later, Page delved into the trauma during therapy.

"I'd sit in therapy and talk about these things, and my therapist would go: 'That's a lot, that's traumatic,' and I'd be like: 'What? What are you talking about?' I don’t know if that was a self-defense mechanism or just being made to feel it’s not a big deal," he explained.

This story was originally published on June 11, 2023 at 1:14 p.m. ET and has been updated.