The Toronto International Film Festival is famous for its star-studded, Oscar-caliber lineup, but it showcases films featuring stellar turns from lesser-known performers too. Before the festival's conclusion Sunday, The Times' film staff caught up with some of the players poised to break out of this year's pack.
As many stars have found, it can take a small film to finally move an actor from the side to center stage. "The First Grader," which rests heavily on Naomie Harris' slim shoulders, may be that film for her.
The role of Teacher Jane — a headmistress in a rural Kenyan school who puts her job, her marriage and indeed her life on the line to fight for an 84-year-old's right to an education — captivated the 34-year-old actress when she read the script, based on a true story.
And the film satisfied her desire for a smaller project; after spending much of her time in the machinery of major studio movies (the two most recent "Pirates of the Caribbean" films and "Miami Vice" among them), she wanted a break.
"I wanted to go back and do something really small, really intimate, where I felt like I could be part of the creative process. And meeting a director like Justin Chadwick, who's always allowing you to contribute — that's really liberating," she said the morning after the film's premiere. "I wanted my passion to be re-ignited, and that's definitely what happened on this piece."
Audiences here responded with tears, standing ovations and buzz that Harris could be an awards contender. But the beginnings of the production — when Harris had to actually teach first-graders for two weeks in Kenya before filming — were difficult, she recalled.
"It was terrifying," she said. "I had to have the Kenyan accent, I had to come up with lesson plans, I taught them all day, which was incredibly exhausting."
The night before shooting began, there was a celebratory dinner at a Nairobi restaurant famous for its cuisine and infamous for its hygiene. Harris got food poisoning and spent her first week on camera trying not to appear ill.
The story begins when an elderly former freedom fighter is turned away from the school. Administrators and parents don't want him there, teenagers taunt him, codgers berate him. But each day he comes back, walking miles with his cane, demanding a chance to learn until Jane takes up his cause.
"It's a weird thing, you sign up to do a film and you don't know if you can find the character. I remember being in Kenya and it was a week before shooting, and I still hadn't nailed the accent. I was having a breakdown and I kept thinking, 'Am I ever going to get her?' But eventually she came.
"With any great part you think, 'I've bitten off more than I can chew.' And honestly, if you don't get that moment, then it wasn't really stretching you."
— Betsy Sharkey
'Wilde' woman
Jessica Chastain completed four years at the Juilliard School in New York and pretty much went straight into a movie based on Oscar Wilde's "Salome" that Al Pacino directs and stars in.
"I think that's getting training from both sides of the coin," Chastain said of the classical education she received at the performing-arts school and the on-set experience with an improvisational personality such as Pacino.
"Wilde Salome" hasn't been released, but the 29-year-old's performance as Rachel Singer, a morally conflicted Nazi hunter in 1960s Berlin in John Madden's dramatic thriller "The Debt," caught eyes here last week.
In the movie, the Northern California native is required to engage in difficult fight scenes, shift nimbly between German and English and express a sense of remorse and moral conflict as she and her team cover up a dark secret — acting in a film with a cast that also includes veterans such as Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Sam Worthington. (Chastain took fight training, learned German and relied on a dance background to prepare.)
Despite landing some plum roles, Chastain has had the misfortune of starring in a few films that have hit distribution roadblocks. The Pacino movie had distribution issues, while "The Debt" was caught in the Miramax-Disney transition.
And then there's her part in Terrence Malick's long-delayed meditative drama "The Tree of Life." Chastain plays Mrs. O'Brien, and Brad Pitt plays her husband. Sean Penn also stars in the film, which was shot in 2008 and is slated for release next year.
"Terry really is the last silent film director," Chastain said of the enigmatic auteur. "When sound came along, a lot of directors began to keep the camera stationary and it became more about blocking and less about movement. But Terry is always moving, and you always have to move with him."
Chastain wonders whether she's been able to move among such diverse parts because some of her films have yet to come out.
