Elliot Page says an unnamed director 'groomed' him as a teenager and told him: 'You have to make the move, I can't'

• Elliot Page revealed in his new memoir that he was "groomed" by a director when he was a teenager.
• He did not name the director nor say if it was someone he had worked with.
• "His frequent texts made me feel special, as did the books he gifted me," Page wrote in "Pageboy."

Elliot Page revealed in his new memoir that he was "groomed" by a male filmmaker when he was a teenager.

Page, who did not disclose how old the director was at the time, wrote in his new memoir "Pageboy" that the unnamed filmmaker's "frequent texts made me feel special, as did the books he gifted me."

Page implied that the grooming happened when he was living in Canada, as he described how the man "took me to dinner at Swan on Queen West," a French diner in downtown Toronto.

Page wrote that while "stroking my thigh under the table" the director whispered to him: "You have to make the move, I can't."

In a chapter titled "Leeches," Page shared several other examples of times when he was touched in a sexual manner by adults when he was still a teenager and before he underwent his gender transition from female to male. 

He wrote that "on a project not long before" the encounter with the director, "a crew member had done the same."

"In between takes he would talk to me about art and films, Kubrick naturally. He invited me to hang out on a Saturday afternoon," he wrote. "After a walk in the rain he grabbed me, asserting we go upstairs. Pulling me in to his body, I could feel his hard cock against me."

While shooting the movie "Hard Candy" in Los Angeles when he was 17, Page recounted having unwilling sex with a man who he said worked on the film and who has gone on to become a director himself.

"He was funny and strange, and he was kind to me. We spoke about books, discussed films and obscure, depressing graphic novels," he wrote. "A glint in his eyes made me feel seen, supported. He had a sweetness even."

After the film's wrap party, Page said that the man drove them back to Page's apartment and followed him in, guiding him into the bedroom with "his hands on my shoulders."

Page wrote that he "went stiff with a smile," and was "unsure what to do."

"He laid me down on the bed. Starting to remove my pants, he said, 'I want to eat you out.' I froze. After it was over, he tried to stay in the bed with me. I had thawed marginally and told him he couldn't, to get out. He slept on the couch."

He also wrote about a repeated incident with a female crew member who assaulted him throughout the course of their time working on a different film.

Page wrote that he felt his confusion over his identity and sexuality — which began at age six when he asked his mother, "Can I be a boy?" — made him "a perfect target" for sexual predators. 

"As puberty transmuted me into a character I had no interest in playing, my isolation, insecurity, and unknowing grew. I desperately needed to anchor myself," he wrote. "In new cities, with no friends, alone in hotel rooms, it was not hard for someone to prey. I'm sure they sense that."

"Pageboy" by Elliot Page is out now.