Ellen Page (as Bliss) is a 17-year-old who becomes hooked on the roller derby after watching skaters in action. It is Page's first leading role since "Juno." (Darren Michaels)
A girl's coming-of-age story has a number of required elements. There's the funny best friend. There's the dreamy boy. The need to break out of the oppressive bonds of a small town and teenagedom. The parents who just don't understand. The sneaking out to roller derby practice. Wait a minute . . .
Drew Barrymore's directorial debut, "Whip It," opening Oct. 2, travels some familiar territory while cleverly swerving around its clichés, says its star Ellen Page. That's one of the reasons she agreed to take the part, her first leading role since her Academy Award-nominated turn in "Juno."
"It's enjoyable to be involved with something that could easily be pegged or pigeonholed, and to be working with Drew, who completely wanted to avoid all that and make a really sincere, truthful, multidimensional story," Page says. Speaking on the phone from London, where she's filming Christopher Nolan's "Inception," she goes down the list of characters who manage to escape conventional treatment, starting with her own.
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Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Page says she learned how to ice skate growing up but was never particularly good at it. After working for three months with her trainer Axles of Evil (a.k.a. Alex Cohen), and scrimmaging with some real L.A. Derby Dolls, she proudly estimates that she did about 99% of her own skating seen on-screen. Some of Bliss' teammates and opponents are played by Barrymore, Kristen Wiig, Eve and Juliette Lewis, under noms de guerre like Iron Maven and Smashley Simpson.
Page, 22, speaks so highly of her compatriots that she realizes it probably sounds too good to be true. "When you're learning something new with a bunch of other girls, you become so supportive, and we all became so close," she says. "It was one of the best, if not the best, filmmaking experiences I've ever had. I felt like this lucky little kid." One with a killer nickname: Babe Ruthless.
(full story)
Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 6:08PM 
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