Actor Ellen Page has revealed that during her early 20s she felt “very depressed and very anxious” due to the constant media scrutiny in her sexuality.

The 31-year-old actor, who came out as a homosexual in 2014, told The Observer that it would have been “very harmful” for her if somebody had revealed her sexuality before her.

“I have a responsibility to be out now, because I have these resources. I can access therapists and security and support. But the reality is a lot of people can be in severely grave danger. I think, for instance, it would have been very harmful for me if someone had outed me earlier.

“When I was 20, someone wrote an article with the headline: ‘The Ellen Page Sexuality Sweepstakes’ in the Village Voice. ‘Is Juno a you know?’ I never even touched a woman outside until I was 27. I was very depressed, and very anxious. I was not well,” she added.

When the #MeToo movement started in Hollywood in 2017, Page was one of the women who had accused director Brett Ratner of inappropriate behaviour.

In a lengthy Facebook post Page accused Ratner of making the slur about her to another actors during the first day of filming the movie, in which she was starring as Kitty Pryde.

Recalling the incident, Page said, “Something had switched. I wanted to talk about the sh**tiness I’d seen. I’ve dealt with these difficult things, whether it’s directors trying to sleep with me when I was 16, or stalkers. But there are people in society who deal with far, far worse and cannot access the resources I have.”

“What changed for me after publishing that was the realisation how much crazy s**t happened that was so normalised. And I internalised it. It’s disturbing. Then, talking about it does really open something in you, which is painful in many ways. But that’s what’s letting us all connect and have the conversations, about intersectional feminism, etc,” she added.