Juno actor Ellen Page has accused Brett Ratner of making a homophobic slur against her on the first day of the filming of X-Men: The Last Stand, consequently outing her to the cast and crew of the film. In a post on Facebook on Friday, Page said that the incident left her feeling violated.
“I was eighteen years old. He looked at a woman standing next to me, ten years my senior, pointed to me and said: ‘You should fuck her to make her realize she’s gay.’ He was the film’s director, Brett Ratner,” the openly lesbian actress writes in the post.
Ratner has been accused of sexual harassment by six actresses, including Natasha Henstridge, Olivia Munn and Jaime Ray Newman in a Los Angeles Times report published on November 1.
“I was a young adult who had not yet come out to myself,” Page continues. “I knew I was gay, but did not know, so to speak. I felt violated when this happened. I looked down at my feet, didn’t say a word and watched as no one else did either. This man, who had cast me in the film, started our months of filming at a work event with this horrific, unchallenged plea. He “outed” me with no regard for my well-being, an act we all recognize as homophobic. I proceeded to watch him on set say degrading things to women.”
The director later pressured her to wear a T-shirt with “Team Ratner” on it. When the actor refused, she was reprimanded by the producers of the film, she writes. “I was an actor that no one knew,” she writes. “I was eighteen and had no tools to know how to handle the situation.”
Page wrote that she had been consistently subjected to “queer and transphobic attitude” in Hollywood. “Hopefully having the position I have, I can help people who may be struggling to be accepted and allowed to be who they are – to thrive. Vulnerable young people without my advantages are so often diminished and made to feel they have no options for living the life they were meant to joyously lead,” she writes.
The Juno and Inception actress also said that working with Woody Allen in To Rome With Love (2012) is the “biggest regret of her career”. Allen has been accused of molesting his daughter, Dylan Farrow. Page also alleged that another director molested her at a dinner meeting when she was 16.
