MUMBAI :  "Juno" star Elliot Page, who came out as a transgender man last year, says he collapsed at the premiere afterparty of the 2010 film "Inception" because wearing a dress and heels to every single event was hampering his mental health.

"It was like a cinematic moment. That night, after the premiere at the afterparty, I collapsed. That's something that's happened frequently in my life, usually corresponding with a panic attack," Elliot said, according to a report in femalefirst.co.uk.

He added: "Ultimately, it's every experience you've had since you were a toddler, people saying, ‘The way you're sitting is not ladylike, you're walking like a boy…,' every aspect of who you are being looked at and put in a box in a very binary system. That's what it leads to."

The actor also shared he can't look back at photos of the 2008 Oscars, when he was nominated for Best Actress for the film "Juno", as Ellen Page.

Speaking to Oprah Winfrey on her Apple TV+ series 'The Oprah Conversation', he recalled: "That was a pretty intense time. I remember it felt so impossible to communicate with people how unwell I was, because obviously there is so much excitement. The film unexpectedly became a big hit, I became quite known, all these things and I felt I couldn't express the degree of pain I was in."

"I could not look at a photo from that red carpet. People might watch this and say, ‘Oh my gosh, this person is crying about the night they went to the Oscars.' That prevents the ability to allow yourself to not just feel the pain but reflect on the pain, to begin to sit down and bring it all up and finally confront all of that," he says.

SOURCE : IANS