These days, the term “young Hollywood” conjures up images of pouty, plastic starlets being chased down Robertson Boulevard by paparazzi and probation officers, but recently the soulful side of young Hollywood made an appearance at a corner deli on Franklin Avenue. “Hi Joe,” Ellen Page said with a faraway smile as Joseph Gordon-Levitt gave her a hug.

Page and Gordon-Levitt are costars in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” the perception-bending heist movie that opens July 16 amid high expectations and strong early reviews. Leonardo DiCaprio leads an extremely deep cast — there are seven Oscar nominees in the film — but Nolan says that Page and Gordon-Levitt more than held their own. “They were simply outstanding,” the director said last year on the London set, “their performances are key to the film and some of the best work I’ve seen.”

But more than their work in any single film, Gordon-Levitt and Page are interesting because, in an era when vacuous celebrity and recycled concepts are ascendant, they are talented actors of serious ambition. Of course, both of them roll their eyes at the expectations and even pretensions that come bundled with that sort of statement — but they also talk freely and articulately about their frustrations with media of the moment and the paradoxes of stardom.

Page, a Nova Scotia native with bird bones and a steady gaze, made her screen debut at age 10 in a Canadian television movie and turned 23 a week after this last Valentine’s Day. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as a pregnant high school student in the 2007 film “Juno” and before that startled audiences in the 2005 movie “Hard Candy,” in which she portrayed a teenager who traps and tortures a man she suspects is a sexual predator.

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