Live From TIFF: Meet the Beautiful Stars of the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival

Rebecca Hall, Christine: “The reason why Christine Chubbuck is in anyone’s consciousness is because in 1974 she was a newscaster in Sarasota, Florida, who went live on air and killed herself. The film is roughly the two weeks before the event, and it’s a filmmaker’s attempt to humanize something that would otherwise be just consigned to shock and horror. I think of it as a film about sensationalism that is in no way sensationalistic. It’s very humanistic.”

Ziyi Zhang, TIFF juror: “No, I’m not nervous [to be on the jury]. You’re nervous when you’re being judged! I’m sure all twelve movies are good and very artistic. We watched two yesterday, and I’m very happy with them.”

Liev Schreiber, The Bleeder: “Everybody knows what a gutsy actress Naomi [Watts, his wife] is; I don’t think many people know how funny she is. I really loved seeing her play Linda [in The Bleeder] because Linda is such a firecracker — she’s from Bedstuy, she’s Brooklyn Italian… She’s got style, very different from Naomi’s. And Naomi went for it, she loves that stuff, and she did such a great job.”

Miles Teller, Bleed For This: “It was about eight months from the time I got [the role] to when I shot. When I got the part I was 188 pounds and 19% body fat. Gor shooting I got down to 160 pounds and 6%. It was just a lot of diet. Towards the end, I was doing four hours boxing, two hours of weights, an hour of accent/dialect and then getting massaged. So it was pretty intense.”

Dan Levy, “Schitt’s Creek”: “It was our first season and I was driving down Sunset Blvd. and I saw [the billboard for the show]. You’re in one of those weird situations where you’re in your car but you really have to stop and take it in. So I sort of just slowed down. There was a lineup of cars honking but I was like, ‘You know what? This is my moment and I’m going to hold up Sunset for a second.'”

Laura Carmichael, A United Kingdom: “I’ve admired [Rosamund Pike’s] work for a long time, so I was excited to be playing her sister. I have some experience playing sisters [from her time on ‘Downton Abbey’, as Edith Crawley] and when you do, it just means you get to hang out with really awesome women and pretend to be really close — and by that nature you do become quite close. But [my character] Muriel is a hundred times sweeter than Edith. Both sexy characters, obviously.”

Vanessa Bayer, Carrie Philby: “Some journalists are more serious than others, so during some of the press this weekend I would interrupt [co-star] Bel [Powley] to make a joke, and she wouldn’t mind at all, but the person interviewing us would be like, ‘Who is this girl?'”

Lou Gossett, Jr., King of the Dancehall: “I keep my [dance moves] to myself. They asked me, ‘Do you think that you can dance?’ I’m a former athlete, but I can’t do that shit no more. My ego and my mind says, ‘Yeah, let’s try it!’ But I don’t think so.”

Mitzi Ruhlmann, Boys in the Trees: “We were all kind of at an age where we were going through a lot of things similar to our characters. We were almost coming of age at the same time. I feel really lucky to have had the film to make sense of that time of my life for me.”

Andrew Scott, Handsome Devil: “[When I was in school] I was good at the stuff I was interested in, and I was terrible at the stuff that I wasn’t interested in. I was big into drawing and painting. I liked a bit of sport as well, but I think what happens to kids is they feel like they have to choose either/or, but actually you’re allowed to do both if you want to.”

Sarah Gadon: “Caitlin [Cronenberg] has such a close relationship with and appreciation for film. She’s been an on set stills photographer and worked on every milestone film I’ve ever made, from Cosmopolis to Enemy, so we’ve been kind of shadowing each other’s careers, not even on purpose.”

Bryce Dallas Howard, Netflix’s “Black Mirror”: “I have been in the past plagued by terrible, constant nightmares that range from ‘Walking Dead’ to ‘Black Mirror.’ I’ve actually done hypnosis to try to get read of these dreams. A year ago, I watched ‘Black Mirror’. This is truly the representation of all of me my deepest fears and anxieties. This is going to sound very actressy of me, but I sent a video of me melting down to the therapist who did the hypnosis, and I was crying and I was like, ‘Doctor, I’ve taken a nosedive!’ So I didn’t watch any more. And then, before the end of last year, Joe Wright, the director, reached out to me with this, which of course was a no-brainer. When I arrived in South Africa to shoot it, it was exactly a year to the week of when that happened, and the title of the episode is ‘Nosedive.’ I showed [Joe] this video; we couldn’t believe it.”

Cynthia Nixon, A Quiet Passion: “My mother was a huge fan [of Emily Dickinson], so we had a record in our house of Julie Harris reading selected poems and letters, which I listened to a lot.”

Mark Duplass, Blue Jay: “I have two high school sweethearts. I don’t see them very often but every now and then we come across each other or hear a story about each other or, god forbid, I open up one of my fucking journals from the mid-90s. I’ll immediately make fun of myself, and then I immediately go, ‘Wait, that sort of overly confident, completely un-jaded person is somebody I really miss.’ So then I get all sad about it, and that was really what the soup of the movie was.”

Angela Sarafyan, The Promise: “I’m a huge fan of Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac. Most of my stuff is with Oscar and it’s so much fun working with him. We kind of had the freedom to find what we wanted to do in each scene. [Oscar] is charming, generous, kind, thoughtful — all the things you’re looking for in a guy.”

Robbie Arnell, ARQ and CW’s “The Flash.”

Charlotte Le Bon, The Promise: “[Oscar Isaac] is really, really intense but he’s also very funny. He’s kind of two different people. On set he’s this intense, rigid and square person — the way he works is really precise — and outside the set he’s really funny. He’s just a guy you want to have a beer and hang out with.”

Nick Kroll, Loving and Sing: “[In Sing] I am Gunter, the Scandinavian dancing pig. It’s very similar to [my role in Loving], Bernie Cohen the 1950’s ACLU lawyer. As you would expect, I sing ‘Shake It Off’ and ‘Bad Romance.’ What else would a Scandinavian pig sing besides Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga?”

Erika Linder, Below Her Mouth: “I obviously would have done the movie even if it was a male director because I like taking risks. I never want to do anything unless it scares the shit out of me. But women understand each other on a very emotional level and when we came together — the whole crew, too — it’s everyone’s love story.”

Natalie Krill, Below Her Mouth: “It was scary, like there was something deep inside me pushing me towards this, because of the fear.”

Maria Bello, The Journey Is the Destination: “[This movie] is more than close to my heart. I actually have a tattoo of Africa on my hip. I’ve been obsessed with Africa my entire life, so it’s just so fortuitous that I would be here at the festival with this incredible film.”

Kreesha Turner, King of the Dancehall: “Nick [Cannon] was pretty chill. There were so many non-actors and actresses on this particular set — apart from the brilliant cast, everybody else were local Jamaican talent and artists. Being a Jamaican myself, I understand all too well that you never know what’s going to come out of their mouths. So as a director, Nick kind of had to allow the free flow that would come from such an environment.”

Ellar Coltrane, Barry: “[Avi Nash] and I are kind of the two ends of the spectrum for Barry. I’m the super quiet, sweater vest-wearing, poetry-reading, middle-class Caucasian friend.”

Lola Flannery, actress: “I like meeting everybody! I don’t have a specific person who I want to meet, I want to meet everybody!”

Gaby Hoffmann, “Transparent”: “”We were [a family] from day one. It’s a real, incredible, weird stroke of genius/magic/love. We all really love each other. We have a very, intense, dynamic, fun emotional experience every season.”

Julia Ducournau, director, Raw: “I thought about the three taboos of humanity: murder, incest, cannibalism. Murder, you see it in every movie, so no. Incest, way too dark for me, no way. Cannibalism made sense for me, because all my movies are about the body.”

Ana Lily Amirpour, director, The Bad Batch: “It’s a mix of practical makeup and CG. I’m not a fan of just CG. I’m into movies from the 90s and the 80s that look organic, in a way. So we did a mix… What you see looks really fleshy and real.”

Natalie Portman, Planetarium, Jackie: “I have not experienced [speaking to spirits] myself, but I believe that anything is possible.”

Jeremy Renner, Arrival: “I believe in other life, yes.”

Amy Adams, Arrival, Nocturnal Animals: “I believe there’s something out there… I don’t know in what form. But I can’t imagine that life is just exclusive to our tiny blue planet, as Carl Sagan calls it.”

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nocturnal Animals: “When [Tom Ford] gets his mind set on something he goes full in. He knows exactly what he wants. And he’s a gentleman, the meaning of the word. He’s not a let down. And he smells good, too.”

William Moseley, Carrie Philby: “Do nice guys finish last? No, I never agree with that statement. But what is a nice guy? Is a nice guy someone who’s going to placate you and say, ‘I’d do anything for you?’ That’s not really a nice guy. That’s actually somebody who’s cruel because they’re not telling you what you really need to be told. A nice guy is someone who’s honest, real and would put you in your place if you need it. So, actually, I think nice guys finish first.”

Rupert Evans, American Pastoral: “We have to age in the movie. My character starts at 27 and I had to play 60. Ewan [McGregor] had to play 65 as well. I sent it to my dad, because it’s kind of weird, you know? It’s really freaky seeing yourself that old. I wonder if I will look like that. It took seven hours of makeup.”

Shohreh Aghdashloo, The Promise: “Oscar [Isaac] is a dear friend of mine. While we were doing Nativity together in Morocco eight years ago, we both said, ‘Let’s do a play together.’ So he said, ‘How about Hamlet, and you’ll play my mother?’ So I said, ‘Where are we going to perform this?’ And he said, ‘Central Park in New York.’ I’m like, ‘I’m not going to take you to a park with all the girls! They’re going to tear you apart! Are you out of your mind?! Let’s find a stage to do it on.’ But it didn’t happen. So when I arrived at the hotel in Portugal [where we were filming The Promise], Oscar came to greet me and we were kissing and hugging each other and jumping up and down and saying, ‘This is even better than Hamlet!'”

Anne Heche, Catfight: “I’ve never gotten into a fight. I’ve never had the inclination or desire or, maybe, the guts to let loose on a woman. That’s kind of what’s so outrageous about this film. There’s no holding back and it’s extremely violent and it was so interesting to pass through that door. It was fun to do the fights, because they were so choreographed, but it was more painful to imagine treating people that way.”

Sandra Oh, Catfight: “I hit [my classmate] Mike Forsley. It was grade 11, I was on the student council, and it was after an event on the quad and there were all these balloons and the football guys — who I’ve known my entire life, we all grew up together — picked up these balloons and were doing this [makes striking motion], saying, ‘Hey, what’s up? Hey, what’s up? Hey, what’s up?’ Ultimately, a balloon doesn’t hurt you but when you have five guys hitting you with balloons and it’s to the point where you’re crouching down… really, it was humiliating. And I snapped and I pushed Mike Forsley against the brick wall and I took his balloon and I just popped it in his face.”

Oliver Laxe, director, Mimosas.

Adriana Ugarte, Julieta: “[Pedro Almodóvar] taught me to work without fear, to jump without net and to learn how to trust in life, because you’re going to resist everything.”

Avi Nash, Barry.

Aja Naomi King, Birth of a Nation: “I was not familiar with the story of Nat Turner. It was a name I had heard once or twice, like, ‘Something happened, they tried and they failed.’ No real details. But then I read the script and started doing research and it was like, ‘Oh, wow, enslaved Africans tried to do that? Like, that was us?! We did that?!’”

Colman Dolmingo, Birth of a Nation: “I’ve been growing into this mustache and embracing it. It’s a conversation piece — people either like it or don’t like it, and it brings out feelings in them, whether it feels pervy in a way or it feels cartoonish… It holds a mirror up to a person.”

Jason Ritter, Carrie Phillby: “I remember a time at a party in high school where I really felt completely insane for the first time. I said some joke, and it was a really benign joke. Anyway, this one woman kind of rolled her eyes and walked away and I was like, ‘Hi, what is the problem? I want to know, because I’m sure there is some sort of misunderstanding.’ I didn’t think that maybe she had had a bad day and it had nothing to do with me. I was trying to fix it so hard, and she was like, ‘Leave me alone.’ I probably totally freaked her out. I was like, ‘I just want to know what I did wrong so I can better myself for the future!’ She was like, ‘The first thing you can do is stop talking to me.'”

Yasmin Warsame, Canada’s Next Top Model alum: “What I’m really, really, really looking forward to is new talents. I like seeing new movies with new talent that I’ve never seen before. I like being surprised. I think that’s always a great pleasure.”

Anya Taylor-Joy, Barry: ““Charlotte [Obama’s fictional girlfriend in the film] is really cool. She’s really got her shit together. She challenges Barry — that was the most important thing we really had to bring. It was kind of a matching of equals.”

Devon Terrell, Barry: “There’s no footage of [Barack Obama] when he was 21. So I kind of had to approach [playing young Obama] as a story about Barry, not just about Barack Obama. If you put on the pressure of it being Obama, it becomes this overbearing thing.”

Ruth Wilson, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House: “I’ve never seen a ghost myself, but I believe in this mystical energy that we all have, and that when our body dies there’s something still left. I believe in the mysteries of life; I think there are some things that we can’t explain. I like to think that are people in my life that still remain.”

Bob Balaban, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House: ““I believe in ghosts. I think 100 years ago before there was television, people couldn’t imagine that there were going to be these rays going through the air that would end up on little tubes and become walking and talking things. I think one day that we’re going to find out — this is so weird that they may have to commit me after I say this — that time kind of goes forward and backwards and people kind of meet along the way sometimes. And maybe that’s what a ghost is.”

Catherine Keener, Unless: ““[Honest Ed’s, an iconic, recently closed Toronto discount store that features in the movie] meant something more to me when I did the film, because Honest Ed apparently was a really good guy. I met his son right before they were selling it. We would go and I’d get 10 t-shirts for a dollar — it was amazing. He would also give out turkeys every year. From what I gather, he was true to his name.”

Lucy Boynton, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House: “The presence of ghosts in this film is very grounded in reality. It’s not some ghosty horror film where they try to jump out and scare you; it’s ghosts in the sense of unsettled spirits treading the same grounds of never coming to terms with your own death. So in that sense, yes, I can’t not [believe in ghosts].”

Jenna Elfman, Barry: “I think every boy has to find his individuality and what makes him a man. [Barry’s] point of view had so many influences, and he had to sort of reconcile for himself what was the senior of all these influences and how he fits in: Who is he? It’s not just some biopic about a president, it’s a story of a boy.”

Osgood Perkins, director, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House: ““How can we begin to imagine that we’re all alone? As alone as we all feel most of the time, how could that actually be so? How could anybody that we are about, anybody that we love, actually just go? I believe that everyone is cared about by somebody, so everybody stays.”

Uzo Aduba, American Pastoral: “What I loved about the book and the film is that we have a sort of picturesque idea of how we paint certain chapters of the American story, and when you see that layer pulled back you get to see the truth of what was happening inside the country, inside the homes and inside the civil unrest happening within our youth.”

Chadwick Boseman, Message From the King: “People say beauty is painful, so I understand the plight of some women and what they have to deal with sometimes in order to look good on a certain night.”

Alix Angelis, The Magnificent Seven: “I’ve seen the original [1960 Magnificent Seven]. It’s a classic, but this was so much more of a reimagining rather than a remake. I don’t think any characters were the same. And they were so diverse!”

Emily Hampshire, Syfy’s “12 Monkeys” and Pop’s “Schitt’s Creek.”

Douglas Booth, The Limehouse Golem: “I wanted to become a jazz musician when I was a kid. I used to love singing, but then my voice broke and I never really bothered to carry on, but I sing in this movie a little bit. And I look completely different. It was the most I got to go outside of myself since I played Boy George in my first breakout role [in 2010’s Worried About the Boy. It was really good fun.”

Jane Lynch, Mascots: ““[My school mascot was] the Thornridge Falcon. I think it was a girl, and it wasn’t silly looking. I remember it being quite aesthetically pleasing… Not like my Minnie the Moose [in the film]. I look like a fluffy.”

Lyndsey Marshal, Trespass Against Us: “[The film] is all about families. I play the mother role, Kelly Cutler, and we have two children. I met the family that it’s closely based on… It’s a tough life. I’ve got two kids, so I just had to hone in on what it is to be mom and what you’d do for your children. You’d do anything for them.”