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Heirs to the ThroneELLEN PAGEThe Prodigy Meeting Ellen Page now is a bit like meeting Audrey Hepburn just after the premiere of Roman Holiday. Or Jodie Foster, with Taxi Driver still in theatres. Like the ingenues who preceded her, Page seems almost oblivious to her sudden fame. Or, more likely, the actress, who turned 21 in February, couldn’t care less. Authenticity and self-awareness are Page’s stock-in-trade, central to her roles in movies as diverse as X-Men: The Last Stand, The Tracey Fragments and, her biggest hit, Juno, in which she starred alongside Michael Cera as a precocious 16-year-old dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. Page shares much with Juno MacGuff: she’s effortlessly cool, hyper-articulate, disarmingly sweet. The Halifax-born Page started acting at age 10, and roles on Trailer Park Boys and films like Marion Bridge quickly followed. 2005’s Hard Candy, in which Page’s character tortures a pedophile, showed her penchant for playing tough, complicated girls. “If I don’t feel passion about something,” she says of the scripts she chooses, “I’m going to suck.” After stints in Brooklyn, L.A. and Toronto, Page recently bought a place in her hometown. It’s a shrewdly self-protective move, given her rapid ascent. This year, she’ll appear in three more films: An American Crime, The Stone Angel and Smart People. But Page is blithe about her success: “Maybe it’s because I’m 20, and I’m like, is this even real?” Page giggles knowingly at the cliché. The answer is obvious.
MICHAEL CERAThe SweetheartFans of the sublimely funny and tragically short-lived series Arrested Development have known about Michael Cera’s understated comic genius for a while now. For three glorious seasons, Cera won over fans as the endearingly awkward George-Michael Bluth. But it wasn’t until last summer, when Cera starred in the vulgar yet tender comedy Superbad, that the rest of the world discovered him – sweet, honest and slightly uncomfortable. In Juno, widely considered one of the best films of 2007, he played an unlikely teenage father, shining alongside Ellen Page. Most recently, he landed the starring role in the forthcoming adaptation of Youth in Revolt – a part that he fantasized about for years, long before the film was a go. It will likely mean more time away from Brampton, Ontario, where he lives with his family, and more time away from Swiss Chalet sauce (“I could live on it”) and Canadian Oreos (“they have firmer cream and crunchier cookies”), but Cera, who turns 20 in June, is philosophical about these sacrifices. “Compared to people who have summer jobs, I’m really lucky,” he says. “I love acting; I always have.” |
