TAKE THE LEAD
Newbie actors steal the spotlight at Toronto Film Fest
AS this year’s Toronto Film Festival moves toward its closing night on Sunday, we take a look at some of its most eye-catching, and potentially award-garnering, breakout performances. The clear winner of the title Most Celebrated Newcomer is 21-year-old
Timothée Chalamet, who was featured in three critically acclaimed films at the fest that couldn’t have been more different. He’s a hilariously blasé boyfriend in Greta Gerwig’s Californian coming-of-age comedy “Lady Bird” and a young soldier in Scott Cooper’s gritty Western “Hostiles,” but the role that’s earned the most notice for the LaGuardia HS-trained New Yorker is in the sweeping gay romance “Call Me by Your Name,” in which he plays a trilingual teen vacationing with his family in Italy who falls for a visiting grad student (Armie Hammer). Chalamet, previously seen in “Homeland,” is next set to appear in “Hot Summer Nights,” another coming-of-age flick that’s set in Cape Cod, Mass., and in Woody Allen’s next movie opposite Selena Gomez.
Sean Baker’s “The Florida Project” stars two female newcomers who made a big impression on audiences, despite one of them being pint-sized: That would be 7-year-old Brooklynn Prince as Moonee, a scrappy, mischievous kid living in a rundown motel. Moonee’s young mom Halley is played by Bria Vinaite, a heavily tattooed 24-year-old New Yorker and non-actor. She was selling marijuana-themed clothing via Instagram when Baker asked her to audition. She’s since been spotted by Page Six out on the town in Toronto with Drake.
Irish actor Barry Keoghan — recently seen in Christopher Nolan’s ensemble war drama “Dunkirk” — won raves for his role in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” a disturbing thriller in which his supremely creepy character is stalking a surgeon (Colin Farrell) on whose operating table his dad died. The 24-year-old Keoghan’s next in the Irish drama “Black ’47,” but he’s also an aspiring boxer who’s set to appear in his first bout that will be televised in Ireland later this month.
The rap-battle satire “Bodied,” produced by Eminem, features Shoniqua Shandai in a standout performance as a lone female MC in a testosterone-soaked world. Raised in Richmond, Va., the actress and rapper has said she hopes “people see it and are just shoved in the face by their own ignorance.”
“Downsizing,” a sci-fi comedy from Alexander Payne, stars Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig, but got critics talking about Hong Chau, a New Orleans native who had turns in HBO’s “Treme” and “Inherent Vice.” Chau takes on the role of a Vietnamese activist and amputee who’s an unwilling participant in the film’s daffy central experiment of shrinking people down to tiny sizes.