It wasn’t easy to explain to my reps that I couldn’t take on a role because of clothing. A face would scrunch up and tilt sideways, but you’re an actor? Wardrobe fittings for films ripped at my insides, talons gashing my organs. Fittings for photo shoots and premieres … I would nosedive, spiraling into a deep depression, anxiety boisterous. The writhing that ensued surpassed language, and the negligible amount that I was able to communicate only reinforced the gaslighting, that tone of voice. Was it pity?
Clothes leeched to my thighs, my chest, latching fast like a slap bracelet from the 1990s. I cringed at the way people lit up when seeing me in feminine clothing, as if I had accomplished a miraculous feat. I will never forget the faces of glee when I donned a tight gold dress in Cannes for the premiere of X-Men 3.
“But you look so beautiful.”
“Just play the game.”
It was too much to play a role on-screen when the role I played in my personal life was suffocating me already. I pushed myself to dispel the truth for fear of banishment, but I was despondent, trapped in a dismal disguise. An empty, aimless shell. And as usual, I would take it out on myself, obsessing about food, striking my head with my fist. As if pounding my skull would knock it out, the invisible force that stalked me.
I ended up backing out of the film.
Instead, I nabbed the role of Bliss Cavendar in Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It, about a seventeen-year-old from a small town in Texas who falls in love with Roller Derby. Ill fit for the expectations of her mother—played by genius Marcia Gay Harden—and forced to be in beauty pageants her entire childhood, Bliss dreams of getting out. She lies to her parents and joins a Roller Derby team. The Derby world embraces her, supports her, and encourages Babe Ruthless, Bliss’s Derby name, to be herself, to be her own hero, as Maggie Mayhem, played by the brilliant Kristen Wiig, suggests.
I identified with Bliss, and my aversion to the gloss of Hollywood was no match for the affinity between a closeted queer and the chance to learn Roller Derby. Not being on camera or in a makeup trailer for months and getting to learn a new, dynamic sport was a lifeline. I’d always been an athlete but had lost a lot of that strength. I wanted that again, that physicality, I missed it from my life.
Learning Roller Derby was no joke though. My Derby coach, Axles of Evil—Alex Cohen, famed NPR host—was warm and encouraging, but she was tough as nails. We trained in the former location of the LA Derby Dolls. A large old factory, with a white-brick exterior. The sound of our falls would ricochet around the cavernous inside. I’d done my share of obligatory ice-skating growing up in Canada, and I hoped it, mixed with my Rollerblade years, would translate. It did, at least for the most part. The track was banked, and even getting on and off it was a challenge at first. I buzzed as I pictured us soaring down and around and up and back while being hip checked, or tripped, or barreled to the ground. I was in for it.
I was still dating Paula at the time, and the thought of being apart for such an extended period was agonizing. I would spend the spring learning Roller Derby and then travel to Michigan to make the film throughout the summer. Paula was living in Nova Scotia, not able to come visit me such a long distance away on a whim. I’d be going nonstop in Los Angeles, working with a physical trainer five days a week and with Axles for three days of the week. Quick trips home wouldn’t be a reality. Traveling extensively for short visits only ever seemed to increase my loneliness, stress, and sadness.
Los Angeles was still a fairly new landscape, and I felt perpetually stuck. The aloneness I experienced during those Juno award months haunted me, a smidgen of the feeling could stir panic. I went from a person who craved being on my own to someone petrified of it. It was humiliating. I’d made it so far and now here I was, incomplete and unable to function.
Paula and I decided she should come live in LA while I trained. We had been in a relationship for a year, lived together in Halifax, and did not want to manage the distance of it all over again. She would work as my assistant so she wasn’t losing income, driving me to training in the day, picking me up after. She’d return to Nova Scotia at the end of the summer. We had a dog named Patti at the time, a brown-and-white Chihuahua that Paula would take on reluctant walks while I trained. Patti was not a fan of this world, wanting nothing to do with anyone other than Paula or me. She was content to live life snuggled on our laps in perpetuity, snarling at anyone who drew near. We loved her, but she clearly had a past. With Paula as my assistant we’d operate in the world with no one being the wiser.
We can keep it a secret and still be together. We’ll make it work. I tried to convince myself.
We stayed in a ridiculous house on a hill just north of Hollywood near the 101. It was like nowhere either of us had lived. It was an architectural folly, all risks and shapes—bold and modern with that sheeny look, a Dwell magazine spread. A movie about a closeted couple coming to Hollywood and the location was impeccable, now the drama just needed to unfold.
I went from flying around the Derby track to struggling to motivate at home. A paragraph in a book was difficult to get through. Nothing I had enjoyed before stimulated me. I’d pretend, but, in reality, I felt dead inside. I was overwhelmed at being known overnight, recognized constantly. I hated it. People coming up, chipper and pumped to meet Juno, me wanting to hide in a hole and never come out. Paparazzi were outside the vet when we were leaving with Patti, who had gotten very sick. They’d follow us into Whole Foods. Another time, a woman in a white Honda trailed us for almost the whole day taking photos. It always left that lingering, anxious thought, Can they tell we are together? I never wanted to leave the house, and Paula was stuck with me, she didn’t know anyone in LA.
Paula resented me for being so closeted here. And during our fights I couldn’t help but get defensive and bring up that she wasn’t out to her family. It didn’t seem fair, me having to deal with the bulk of the blame. I was at least trying to make things work, figure out a way for us to be together. In Nova Scotia, even though we were living in the same one-bedroom apartment, her parents did not think we were a couple. And it wasn’t like we weren’t around them. I was over there all the time. Her mom and dad were very nice, but they were also very homophobic. They were religious, and things don’t evolve overnight, especially when the Bible comes into play. And yes, my mom knew, but she was disappointed, and that sorrow sprang from the same holy source. But eventually my mom started to change, her old narratives began to crumble, creating space for new ones. When I came out as gay, Paula showed her parents my speech at the Human Rights Campaign conference. Her father got up and left the room and Paula’s mother looked to her and asked, “Did you know Ellen was gay?”
In LA, we fought about who was closeting who the most. But, the truth is, it was worse for Paula. I was in denial, desperate to make it work. The family thing was somewhat manageable, albeit hurtful. The Hollywood ball game was a whole other story, riddled with confusing rules that constantly changed. And I had changed. I was different here, she wasn’t. I was being told to lie and hide. It puzzled me to watch cis straight actors play queer and trans characters and be revered. Nominations, wins, people exclaiming, “How brave!”
“Keep your personal life private, that is what I tell all my clients,” my manager would instruct me, while the same clients walked the red carpet with a spouse or came out as heterosexual in an interview. Being arm in arm walking down the street in paparazzi photos was a natural phenomenon, even encouraged for publicity. There was always the pressure to appear more feminine—dresses to events, high heels, “take off your hat.” This was my manager’s attempt at helping me build my career. In her heart she was caring for me, coaching me to morph into part of the club, making sure I still had all opportunities available to me. I got lost in the part, unable to fully lean into the character but still losing track of myself. Stuck in the liminal space.
Hollywood is built on leveraging queerness. Tucking it away when needed, pulling it out when beneficial, while patting themselves on the back. Hollywood doesn’t lead the way, it responds, it follows, slowly and far behind. The depth of that closet, the trove of secrets buried, indifferent to the consequences. I was punished for being queer while I watched others be protected and celebrated, who gleefully abused people in the wide open.
“The system is twisted so that the cruelty looks normative and regular and the desire to address and overturn it looks strange,” Sarah Schulman writes in her required read, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences.
Paula’s and my relationship was caught in the cross fire, and I was losing track of how to make it work.