Max Page plays Reed Hellstrom on the American TV soap opera The Young and the Restless. At age six, he appeared in his first national commercial, a spot for Volkswagen which aired during The 2011 Super Bowl, in which he appeared as a boy in a Darth Vader costume.
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Max has appeared in local commercials, and has acted "since he was barely able to walk".[1]
Max joined the cast of The Young and the Restless as Reed Hellstrom November 24, 2009.[2]
The ad for the 2012 Volkswagen Passat, booked by Donny Deutsch Advertising Inc., features Max as a young boy in "full Vader regailia" attempting to use The Force to start a washer and dryer, and to wake the dog and a doll. After he is unsuccessful in those attempts, he is startled to discover he can start the car, though his father actually did it using a remote control.
Max had never seen any of the Star Wars movies, saying he was too scared.
The Passat ad appeared on YouTube the week before its TV debut on February 6, 2011. By the next morning, the video had received one million views; the number reached 8 million before the commercial aired on TV.[1] As of February 7, the video had more than 15 million views. Max's mother Jennifer Page said the reaction was "overwhelming. ... I can't even keep up with the messages and the calls."[3]
James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times said the ad "will get inside people’s heads and stay there because it combines the iconic 'Star Wars' character and a classic sentiment—a child’s desire to be larger than life."[4] Of all the Super Bowl ads, Rainey said, "the one you’ll actually want to see again is Volkswagen's, powered by the force of a tiny Darth Vader who tells a simple story, with a little body language and nary a word."[4]
Max met James Earl Jones, the voice of Vader in the Star Wars movies, in New York City[5] on February 7.[6]
On May 24, Max appeared in costume, with the Star Wars Darth Vader music playing, at the inauguration of the Volkswagen Chattanooga Assembly Plant.[7] The previous night, the Passat ad won an online competition on the CBS special Clash of the Commercials: USA vs. the World,[8][9] in which people were asked to "choose the greatest commercial of all time."[8] The second-place finisher was Heineken's "Walk-in Fridge".[10]
When he was three months old, Max had life-saving surgery, and soon after that received a pacemaker to treat a heart disorder called Tetralogy of Fallot.[1] Children's Hospital Los Angeles cardiology chief Michael Silka said, "He can essentially have normal activity and with careful care, a full life is a reasonable expectation."[3]