Enlarge By Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY "I feel a lot more comfortable with press, with experimenting with style," says Ellen Page, who stars in Whip It, out Friday. The actress, now 22, won acclaim, and a 2008 best-actress Oscar nomination, as a pregnant teen in Juno.  WATCH THE TRAILER

When Ellen Page was promoting her Oscar-nominated 2007 dramedy Juno, she was subdued, a little stilted and not exactly reveling in all the attention being lavished on her. She's still cerebral, still every bit as solicitous, but now Page, 22, is having a blast.

Perhaps it's because Page realizes when she needs to disappear and get a little perspective.

"I went to Oregon to study permaculture and lived in an eco-village for a month outside Eugene. It's called Lost Valley. It was amazing and exactly what I needed, because there had been the Juno thing, where you're getting a lot of attention," Page says. "You're learning how to live in a holistic way with the cycles of the Earth. At one point I was digging goat (manure) and putting it into a wheelbarrow, and while shoveling it, I just went, 'Oh, my God, this is exactly what I want to be doing right now.' "

Page is an iconoclast without trying to be. Her 2008 best-actress Oscar nomination for playing a spunky pregnant teen in Juno still seems a "weird thing" to her. But she has embraced her career and all that it offers, even the more frivolous aspects.

"I feel a lot more comfortable with press, with experimenting with style. I have a stylist. I used to be terrified about everything, and now I'm like, 'Maybe we should throw this in,' " the actress says of her newfound fashion savvy. "I wish I had that then, a little bit. I would have been more comfortable."

In today's rowdy young Hollywood, Page is an anomaly: a charismatic bookworm who can chatter about geopolitics and the flaws in our penal system while also swooning over musician Damien Rice. She's equally idiosyncratic in Whip It, opening Friday, as Bliss Cavendar, a reticent beauty pageant princess who becomes a hard-hitting roller derby champ.

Page signed on before she shot Juno and had no qualms about working with a first-time director, Drew Barrymore. For her, being Bliss was, well, blissful.

Totally 'awesome' role

"The awesome thing about playing Bliss was playing a girl who, at first, is introverted, shy and uncomfortable in her own skin and is involved in the beauty pageant world because she feels like this is what she's supposed to do," Page says. "And then she finds this world and falls in love with it. It makes her develop confidence, which leads to a sense of sensuality. It's a powerful moment in anyone's life."

You might think Page, a delicate wisp with expressive eyes, wouldn't cut it in the brutal world of derby.

"It's perfect that she's playing a roller derby queen because she's tough," says Jason Reitman, who directed Page in Juno and thinks of her as his "little sister."

Page first heard about the movie while promoting the drama An American Crime at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, before she shot Juno. She read the Whip It script at her home in Halifax, Nova Scotia, met with director Barrymore at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, and "that was it," Page says, snapping her fingers.

Barrymore cast Page before Juno made her a star, seeing an inherent toughness in her that would make her believable as a wallflower who becomes a hellion named Babe Ruthless.

"I didn't want Ellen to do 'Juno II,' Barrymore says. "She has range. Ellen is an adult. She's inquisitive about life. She has a lot of questions and is figuring stuff out, but she's wise beyond her years.

"There's no reason to dumb her down. Ellen is the real deal. I know actresses, I know who's a flash in the pan and who's authentic. Ellen is an extremely unique and powerful soul."

And she's one who doesn't cut corners. Opting to do her own skating and take her own hits in the rink, Page started training three months before shooting. She moved from her home base in Canada to Los Angeles, where she has a place she shares with a roommate, to begin transforming herself with the help of both a derby player and a personal trainer.

"All I did when I was a kid was play sports. I played soccer really competitively, and I hadn't done anything like that in a while. I was kind of out of shape — OK, not kind of, I was totally out of shape. As time went on, I was building confidence and coming out of my shell."

She also skated with the Derby Dolls, an L.A. team. The first time they came to the rink, Page says, she felt as if she would be sick, "putting on my skates, hands shaking, almost ill. But then you do it, and you realize you can't think and you can't look at your feet. You just do it. It's so much fun, and it becomes addictive."

By the time shooting started in Detroit, Page was in killer shape. In fact, says Juliette Lewis, who plays Page's nemesis in the movie, "she was faster than everybody. She wanted to make it as real as possible. She had no fear. She was cool."

And, Barrymore says, increasingly comfortable with the sexy, skimpy outfits Page wore as a member of the Hurl Scouts derby team.

"She's really sexy. I did my wardrobe fittings with her where we would just take our clothes off and look at our own bodies," Barrymore says. "We both have insecurities or flaws, but we were both like, 'How do we get over this? How do we be the sexiest we can be in this movie?' We pushed each other. We challenged each other. We developed a love affair that was based on truth rather than niceties."

In person, Page is forthright, direct and passionate. But she's also loose, giggling about the washboard abs her friend Ben Foster sported in their 2006 superhero hit X-Men: The Last Stand.

"She's very focused and listens when you speak to her. You're talking and she's looking at you, really looking through you, and processes everything you say," says Alia Shawkat, Page's close friend both in Whip It and in real life.

The two traveled to Amsterdam together after wrapping Whip It, and Shawkat recently visited Page in Paris while she was shooting the drama Inception. Aside from being travel companions, they are writing partners who are crafting a comedy.

"She's so analytical about things she does. But at the same time, she's not self-aware. She'll be like, 'Are you having fun? Are you sure? I'm having fun but are you having fun?' " Shawkat says. "She's probably the smartest girl I know of her age. She reads non-stop. She's always introducing me to weird facts. She's so eco-conscious, which I'm not. I've learned everything from her."

Page loves Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami and recently finished David Suzuki's environmental tome The Big Picture, an "incredible" book that "breaks down everything that's going on with the environment right now."

Mostly, she flies under the radar, opting to hike with her terrier mix, Sprout, rather than going clubbing in L.A.

"I'm not a fancy person. I love small spaces. I like tiny cars. I don't buy things, aside from music and books," says Page, who returns to her home in Nova Scotia when she's not working.

Perhaps she is left alone by the tabloids because Page doesn't discuss her personal life in interviews. Nor does she party with superstars.

Or maybe, she muses, "it's because I'm kind of boring. I don't think I'm boring, but I have different interests. I don't go out much, not because I'm hiding but because I'm not a big drinker. I go out and have a good time — I go to a concert with Drew and have an amazing time."

For now, she's back to work on Inception, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard. In the winter, she will shoot a "small and crazy and fun" movie called Super with Rainn Wilson and Liv Tyler.

"Rainn Wilson becomes a superhero," she sums up. "I play this girl who works at a comic-book store who convinces him that I should be his sidekick."

Page would like to direct someday, and she remains choosy about her acting work.

She downloaded a 'Ghost'

"When I was much younger, I did everything because I loved it. I never look back on those movies and think, 'Oh, my God.' Yeah, I did a movie called I Downloaded a Ghost. I had an amazing time shooting it," she says. "Everything has led to where I am now. Before Juno, I was very conscious of the movies I chose. But yes, now I'm even more so."

The word Page uses most often in conversation is "amazing." For her, the glass is always not just half-full but overflowing.

"I'm in control of making every moment of my life good or bad, and I just want to be present. I want to enjoy everything. And that's what I focus on.

"I woke up the other day and I was noticing that I was cranky. That's ridiculous," she snaps. "My life is ridiculous. The only times I get conflicted with my job is that I feel so lucky."