“At Sundance, you see industry people you know at screenings,” says Peter Sarsgaard. “But in Toronto, there’s a di verse group of local moviegoers, so it’s a more accurate barometer of how a movie is going to play to the general audience.”
He’s among a raft of stars at the Toronto International Film Festival, which begins its 10-day run today in Canada.
Others set to join him include George Clooney, Megan Fox, Penelope Cruz, Nicolas Cage, Matt Damon, Colin Farrell, Bill Murray, Drew Barrymore, Demi Moore, Michael Cera, Viggo Mortensen, Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Edward Norton and Jennifer Connelly.
Sarsgaard is representing “An Education,” in which he plays a charming 30-something con man who seduces a 16-year-old schoolgirl in 1961 London. Directed by Denmark’s Lone Scherfig and adapted by novelist Nick Hornsby from Lynn Barber’s memoir, the movie opens in New York on Oct. 9.
“An Education” will use Toronto to build on the buzz from its premiere in January at Sundance, where critics hailed newcomer Carey Mulligan as a new Audrey Hepburn for her performance as the teen, introduced to a more sophisticated world by her new boyfriend.
“I first met Carey when she was doing ‘The Seagull’ in London,” says Sarsgaard, who later acted with her when the production came to Broadway. “I read with a bunch of different girls, and it was clear she had something the others didn’t.”
Mulligan was 22 at the time, “and while we could have cast a girl who was actually 16 it wouldn’t have been as interesting. It would have been more about the sex.”
“An Education” has one brief and tasteful sex scene, but mostly it explores the teenager-older-man relationship in the context of a pre-mod London — with a side trip to Paris — when such hookups were neither illegal nor particularly unusual.
“This was a depressing time in English history, after World War II, and these are two people desperately wanting to have fun,” says Sarsgaard, who splits his time between London and New York with his wife, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and their young daughter.
“I decided to play the character as someone who in some ways was emotionally younger than the girl,” he says. “That was more sympathetic than going the smoking-jacket sophisticate route.”
Lou’s daily reports from the To ronto Film Festival are at nypost.com/blogs/movies.