In a scene from Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s titular character makes an impassioned speech to a hairstylist that concludes with, “Hair is everything.” Of course, it’s meant to be an overly dramatic statement made after a bad haircut—but in the very real life of a young Elliot Page, there was a time when his hair was everything. “I wanted to be a boy. I would ask my mom if I could be someday,” Page told Time magazine for a new cover story, as he recounted being nine years old and begging his mother to let him cut his hair short so that the world could see him the way he saw himself.
Page came out as transgender in December of last year and detailed his experience to Time in an interview that showed both the highs and lows of being queer and trans in the film industry. Page started acting professionally at the age of 10 and for nearly his entire career, he said he felt uncomfortable in the clothes and hair given to him for roles. Shortly after that first liberating haircut, he had to grow his hair out again in order to present as more feminine for work. He told Time that even as he got older and gained more clout from starring in films like Juno and X-Men, it was hard to “explain to people that even though [I was] an actor, just putting on a T-shirt cut for a woman would make me so unwell.”