No calls

Comments

16 responses to “No calls”

1. 

   twiliter

   Sep 4, 2026 11:43 AM

   Maybe she could seek female roles, would that be too much of a stretch? Maybe roles involving mentally ill women, I know I’ve seen/read a few of those. She’d be a shoo in. Maybe a tragicomedy type thing.
2. 

   Artymorty

   Sep 4, 2026 1:16 PM

   It’s also awfully hard to look past the fact that she’s a woman pretending to be a man. She’d have to be a minor character for that not to figure in the plot. Otherwise, it’s just very, very distracting, so much so that it pulls the viewer out of the story.

   Trans actors can only play major characters who are conspicuously trans — it’s got to be a stated aspect of the character — or minor characters where there’s just no time or plot necessity to address it. Or maybe they can only be cast in sci-fi/fantasy where the lines are a bit blurrier?

   I can’t think of a single instance otherwise.

   As for Page’s part in The Odyssey, I’m going to chalk it up to both the fantasy-adjacent milieu, and the relative smallness of the part.

   Insufferable trans YouTuber Abigail Thorn was cast in House of the Dragon (the same show that cast, and then apparently dropped, our dear ally James Dreyfus), but Thorn’s transness was immediately addressed: he plays a crossdressing sailor who makes a ribald sausage joke in his first scene. There: he’s actually a man and everyone knows it. Now we can move on.

   There’s a transman character in the Fallout series, but again, her transness is explicitly addressed immediately: she’s smaller than the other guys in the platoon, and shy about getting undressed, because she’s not a guy.

   That’s the mold of pretty much every character played by a trans-identifying actor. Their actual sex is part of the character. They’re not cast in actual opposite-sex roles.

   Cross-sex character acting was common in the past — from Ancient Greece to Shakespeare, but it’s virtually unheard of in Hollywood today. Linda Hunt played a man in The Year of Living Dangerously back in the ’80s and it was such a novelty they gave her an Oscar. Plus, she never identified as a transgender man in reality, so the Academy was free to openly celebrate her for convincingly portraying a man while not actually being one. When someone’s actually claiming to be the opposite sex in real life, you’re supposed to pretend they’re not even acting, which makes it all the more uncomfortable when you’re watching them act.

   Felicity Huffman played a transwoman (a man pretending to be a woman) in Transamerica, so that’s a case of a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. (Reminds me of when Rock Hudson, a closeted gay man in real life, played a straight man pretending to be gay in order to seduce Doris Day in Pillow Talk: a gay man pretending to be a straight man pretending to be a gay man!) Huffman’s role was technically cross-sex acting. (The Academy once again went bananas for it and nominated her for an Oscar.)

   Jared Leto, Hilary Swank, and Jaye Davidson all played transgender characters, and their actual sex was pivotal to the characters. (The Academy nominated all three, two of whom won the trophy.)

   Hunter Schafer has been cast in the upcoming Blade Runner TV series, and we don’t know yet how his trans status will play out in the story, but already, we’re talking about a cyberpunk sci-fi future defined by artificial bodies and body parts… so it’s hard to imagine his real-life surgically-modified body won’t factor into the story.

   If anything, the artifice of trans people’s identities is more apparent than ever when they’re put onscreen in fictional stories.
3. 

   iknklast

   Sep 4, 2026 1:38 PM

   Trans actors can only play major characters who are conspicuously trans — it’s got to be a stated aspect of the character

   This isn’t always the case, though. We have at least two transmen actors here in Lincoln who get cast in major roles. At first it was awful; you couldn’t tell whether they were supposed to be male or female. Both of them have taken testosterone, and now pass as male quite well. I imagine few in the audience who didn’t know them prior to transition would notice.

   There have been some difficult moments, however, while they were transitioning. Such as, in Much Ado About Nothing, when the prince is wooing the girl for the suitor, and pretending to be the suitor. When you have a very large woman pretending to be a slimmer, taller man, it is difficult for anyone to believe the pretense would work.
4. 

   Artymorty

   Sep 4, 2026 1:41 PM

   But Lincoln isn’t Hollywood.
5. 

   iknklast

   Sep 4, 2026 2:43 PM

   True. I just noticed that transmen can often pass better than transwomen. Not Elliott Page; she is too small of build and delicate to play leading male roles.
6. 

   Artymorty

   Sep 4, 2026 2:46 PM

   It’s interesting that there’s still a lot of cross-sex acting on the stage, but not onscreen. Maybe it’s something to do with screen production aiming for verisimilitude whereas the stage is very artificial by nature.
7. 

   Piglet

   Sep 4, 2026 3:26 PM

   Linda Hunt playing Billy Kwan is an interesting example. That casting is now considered yellowface and highly problematic because she’s white, but there’s no issue with her playing a man despite not being one.
8. 

   maddog1129

   Sep 4, 2026 4:21 PM

   I know I get some pushback for being – Canadian?

   If Page thinks the pushback is because she is Canadian, she’s deluded in more ways than one.
9. 

   Ophelia Benson

   Sep 4, 2026 5:00 PM

   To be fair, that was a joke.
10. 

    maddog1129

    Sep 4, 2026 8:12 PM

    Ah.

    I’m slow on the uptake.
11. 

    Ophelia Benson

    Sep 4, 2026 8:37 PM

    Well, it’s more that Page is extremely not funny.
12. 

    Dave Ricks

    Sep 4, 2026 10:35 PM

    Elliott Page reminds me of a mime trapped in a box, but using her words instead of her hands.
13. 

    Francis Boyle

    Sep 4, 2026 11:14 PM

    If Page were to put on some weight and Nolan were to do another Batman film she could play Danny DeVito playing the Penguin. I might even watch it. Otherwise, I don’t see much future for her career.

    More seriously, if Page thought she could opt out of Hollywood sexism by pretending to be a man, this is her wake up call. You can’t opt out. Not her, not women in Afghanistan, or anywhere else. You can only fight.
14. 

    Freemage

    Sep 5, 2026 1:32 AM

    It’s painful to see Page brought to this, in part because she was so magnificent in Hard Candy, her breakout role. But that part couldn’t be played by a man or boy–the role was very specifically sexed, because that was the whole point.

    As for roles, Page could play the nerdy Poindexter type for comedic effect, I suppose–roles where the male character’s lack of physical masculinity is part of the gag.
15. 

    Your Name’s not Bruce?

    Sep 5, 2026 5:13 AM

    It is sad, but at this point she sounds like a furry, wondering why she is never asked to play a wolf, fox, or horse.

    I would put a lot of blame on those around her who went along with the idea (or worse, suggested it to her) that instead of being a lesbian, she was in fact a man. However troubled she was, this “solution” was not going to fix anything.
16. 

    Mostly Cloudy

    Sep 5, 2026 3:13 PM

    GC feminists will often say that they can “clock” a trans-identified male upon seeing and hearing them.

    When I watch Elliot Page in recent interviews, I can certainly “clock” that this person is a woman, a woman with a hoarse-sounding masculine voice.

    And as iknklast pointed out, Page doesn’t have the physique to play “leading men” roles like the romantic lead or the action hero. Page’s acting career is likely to consist of side parts like her role in “The Odyssey”, or maybe voice acting, where audiences are less likely to be puzzled by her appearance.