LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Elliot Page said that he had shingles while filming 'Inception' due to the intense stress he experienced while working on the project and attempting to manage the "chaos" in his personal life.
The actor, who portrayed Ariadne in the 2010 science fiction picture, wrote in his recently published autobiography 'Pageboy' that his shingles "communicated the stress my body felt" while on production.
'Shingles popped out of my spine while filming'
Herpes zoster, usually known as shingles, is an infection that typically causes a painful rash that resembles a strip of blisters but can also cause chills, fever, headaches, and eyesight loss. He wrote, "Shingles popped out of my spine while filming 'Inception' when I was twenty-two, Despite everyone being delightful to work with, I felt out of place."
He added, "In a cast full of cis men, I did not understand the role I found myself in. For the first two weeks of the film I joked I would be recast with Keira Knightley, and rightfully so," he continued, as reported by Insider.
In the movie, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, and Dileep Rao as Dom Cobb, Arthur, Eames, and Yusuf, who recruited a student of architecture to join their team. The creation of the dreamscapes is the special duty of his character. Before undergoing his gender transition from female to male, Page had already shot the film for almost a decade. It was also before he openly admitted that he was attracted to women while still posing as a woman.
He talked about the stress and confusion he was experiencing as he dealt with his closeted connections with other women. Page was at the time dating a lady who was "out, and surrounded by a community of queer women."
'I was not settled, I still felt out of place'
He remembered and said,"I was not settled, I still felt out of place, stirring up the dust. A pinball of projection, I internalized the chaos. It left me feeling bereft of hope." He added, "My body hoarded the unexamined emotions, sensations, wants, and needs," he wrote. "Easy sentences prepared in my brain, stuck. They were visible to me, written out, I heard the voice but my mouth refused to cooperate. Just the tick tick tick of the windup toy, or nothing at all."
According to research, males who experience significant amounts of mental stress may have shingles twice as often. Since shingles and chickenpox are both brought on by the same virus, having chickenpox increases your chance of developing shingles in the future, as per reported by Insider.
Once you've had chickenpox, the virus resides latently in your body, preventing recurrence until your immune system is compromised, which can happen with specific medical conditions or treatments, such as HIV or chemotherapy.
Stress may also damage the immune system, which Page claimed may have been the case for him. This is due to the fact that stress triggers the body's fight-or-flight response and that the stress hormone cortisol inhibits the immune system.
