Since Ellen Page came out as gay at an event for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) two years ago, she says she feels "like a different person."
The "Gaycation" host explained to HuffPost Live's Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani on Wednesday that she's still unsure how coming out has affected her career. But she said her creative life is getting to "blossom" because she's "actually getting to interact with it as the authentic person that I am."
Page was quick to acknowledge how happy she is to be living openly with such an outpouring of support. She got emotional describing how many people of the LGBTQ community struggle to find acceptance. She explained her thoughts after publicly coming out:
It really wasn't until the moment that I did it and I was living even those days afterward where it was really like, 'Wow' like just thinking of the, maybe, the old things or the shame or all the feelings that at that point you might not even be necessarily as cognizant of, quite frankly. And just the feeling of such a massive shift and then it makes me think of all the people who, particularly young people, who come out and don't receive that support, [who] don't get a standing ovation and an outpour of love... get kicked out of their homes or hurt and, you know, we need to change that.
While Page felt the need to publicly address her sexuality -- going so far as to say she was tired of "lying by omission" in her 2014 HRC speech -- she said it's not necessarily a blanket responsibility for every public figure.
"Everyone is on their own journey or their own path and might even be navigating how they feel about their own identity," Page said. For her though, it's a decision she says she wishes she'd made earlier.
"All I can say is I wish I'd made the decision sooner," she said. "It's the best decision I've personally ever made, but everybody's sort of on their own path, I suppose."
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