Disappearing acts
Some stars at TIFF are hiding in plain sight in their films,
Celebrities normally come to TIFF to be seen by their adoring fans.
This year it almost seems as if they’re trying to hide from them, on the big screen, at least. But it’s for grand artistic reasons.
Many of the big-ticket films announced in the first rollout of titles for the Sept. 10 to 20 festival boast well-known stars who simply disappear into their roles. They become their characters so fully, you have to look hard to recognize them.
Johnny Depp, Black Mass
Lose the pirate makeup and scarves, shave the forehead, slap in a pair of blue contacts and you get Johnny Depp as James (Whitey) Bulger, one of the most notorious criminals in U.S. history. The demonic laugh helps make this the scariest incarnation yet for Depp, a true chameleon.
Paul Gross, Hyena Road
Everybody thinks of Paul Gross as the all-Canadian stud: darkhaired and cleanshaven as the righteous Mountie from Due South and the stoic military man from Passchendaele (which he wrote and directed). Now he’s the grey-bearded army elder in Hyena Road, his Afghanistan War drama that he also wrote, directed and co-stars in.
Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl
He was an uncanny Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, the role that won him the Best Actor Oscar, but this is Eddie Redmayne’s grandest gamble: becoming a woman.
He plays Einar Wegener, a pioneering sex-change recipient from the 1920s, in The Danish Girl, a film that reunites him with his Les Misérables director, Tom Hooper.
Tom Hardy, Legend
There’s no face Tom Hardy can’t make his own, even when it’s sheathed in an iron mask, as it was for much of Mad Max: Fury Road, his summer 2015 blockbuster. He redoubles his efforts in this crime drama, playing both terror twins Ronald and Reginald Kray, the gangster siblings who stormed London in the 1950s and ’60s.
Jane Fonda, Youth
Versatile actress Jane Fonda can play nasty, as she proved in Monster-in-Law, but spa saga Youth requires her to look the part, too.
Fonda plays a bitter ex-Hollywood star with a grudge against a former director, bringing the bile along with the trowelled-on makeup and brassy blond wig. Best Supporting Actress? Who dares deny her?