Actress Ellen Page has thanked Ellen
DeGeneres for making it a bit easier for her to come out gay.
DeGeneres has said that Hollywood at
first rejected her after her 1997 announcement that she is gay.
She's now considered one of Hollywood's most bankable stars.
The 27-year-old Page announced she's
gay on Valentine's Day during a speech delivered at Time to THRIVE,
an LGBT youth conference hosted by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
and held at Bally's Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“I am so proud of you for coming out
and happy for you,” DeGeneres told Page during an appearance on her
daytime talk show. “I know what a scary thing that is.”
“I think my biggest fear in doing it
was having a panic attack, quite frankly,” Page said. “I was
just so ready to do it, and so excited to do it. So it was a
combination of such thrill to be at a place in my life where I was
able to do that and grateful to have that moment.”
“And grateful to you, because you did
it at a time when it was much harder and much scarier,” Page told
DeGeneres.
Page described the closet as “toxic.”
“Honestly, it wasn't until making
that choice [to come out publicly] and doing that [speech] when I
realized that … I was carrying a tremendous amount of shame and
guilt for not being out, and felt isolated from the LGBT community,”
Page added. (The video is embedded on this page. Visit
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