USA TODAY - L awrence J ournal -W orld TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2015
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CAUGHT IN THE ACT ‘Live With Kelly and Michael’ host Kelly Ripa was honored Monday with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Ripa, 45, posted a picture of her star on Instagram with the caption “The official star. Thank you to everyone for this extraordinary honor. #walkoffame.”
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STYLE STAR Fashion, it seems, is all black and white for Saoirse Ronan. The actress attended the ‘Brooklyn’ screening Monday at the BFI London Film Festival in a sleek white gown with black embellishments.
KARWAI TANG, WIREIMAGE
HOW WAS YOUR DAY? GOOD DAY TAYE DIGGS The actor will join ‘Rosewood’ (Wednesdays, 8 p.m. ET/PT), starring Morris Chestnut, for a multi-episode story arc starting in November.
CAITLIN CRONENBERG, A24
After escaping captivity, Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) flip through her belongings in her childhood home. In Room, the two actors spent five weeks filming in a 10-by-15-foot space with a director and crew.
A WINDOW INTO ‘ROOM’ Emotions are on display in the tough drama, drawing buzz in the early Oscars race
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GOOD DAY CONAN O’BRIEN The late-night comic is hitting the road again — this time to Armenia. He’ll be the first American talk show host to do a show from the former Soviet republic. TBS says the episode will air Nov. 10.
KEVIN WINTER, GETTY IMAGES, FOR TURNER
THEY SAID WHAT? THE STARS’ BEST QUOTES “People ask me if I want to be a Bond girl, and I say, ‘No, I want to be the villain.’ I’m waiting for that call!” — Jessica Chastain in the November issue KARWAI TANG, of ‘W’ magazine WIREIMAGE Compiled by Alison Maxwell
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Republicans are more likely than Democrats to scan a hotel room so they don’t leave an item behind. Source G6 Hospitality’s “Motel 6 Items Left Behind” survey Aug. 25-Sept. 1 of 1,060 U.S. adults TERRY BYRNE AND PAUL TRAP, USA TODAY
Tremblay, Larson and co-star Joan Allen share a light moment at the premiere of Room during the Toronto International Film Festival last month, where the film won the People’s Choice Award.
Patrick Ryan
@PatRyanWrites USA TODAY NEW YORK The biggest film of the fall festival season also has the tiniest star. Jacob Tremblay, 9, has watched Room three times since its rapturous world premiere at Telluride last month. Seeing himself on screen, “it makes me feel good,” he chimes, legs dangling off a bench. “It makes me feel like, if you do lots of effort, you get all this stuff and awards and” — he whispers — “more toys.” Smartly dressed in a shirt and sweater, Tremblay has cleaned up since his ponytailed days in Room (opens in New York and Los Angeles Friday, nationwide Nov. 6), playing a 5-year-old boy named Jack who knows nothing of the outside world. He’s spent his whole life locked in a shed with his fiercely protective mother (Brie Larson), who was raped repeatedly by her kidnapper (Sean Bridgers) and plots an escape. Based on Emma Donoghue’s best-selling 2010 novel of the same name, the thriller won the coveted People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. Past winners include 12 Years a Slave, The King’s Speech and Slumdog Millionaire, all of which have gone on to win best-picture Oscars. Larson, whom awards pundits
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have identified as the best-actress front-runner on GoldDerby.com, went Method to prepare for the role of Ma. She adopted a carbfree diet and talked to a trauma specialist, and she cloistered herself at home for a month. “Through that silence, I was able to remember a lot of memories from my childhood that I had only seen through my child eyes,” says Larson, 26. She reflected on her experience growing up in a one-room apartment with her younger sister and mother, who was going through a divorce but put on a brave face for her kids. “You’re always trying to find the way that you can reach whatever this character is,” Larson says. “I didn’t know what my mom’s experience was like. But I
found that the movie would be a chance to explore that.” Larson and Tremblay spent half of the 10-week shoot in a 10by-15-foot space with director Lenny Abrahamson and a crew. Playing games and making toys to use as props, the actors had a connection that carried them through heavier moments. In one scene, “Brie had gone to the very limit: bawling, crying, falling over,” Abrahamson recalls. “As soon as I called ‘Cut,’ Jake was there like, ‘Hey, why are you still crying? What’s your favorite Star Wars character? Who would win in a fight: a saber-toothed tiger or a mammoth?’ “In a way that Jack helps Ma survive, Jake really helped Brie through this process.”
MOVIES
Elba explores commanding side in ‘Beasts’ Brian Truitt @briantruitt USA TODAY
TORONTO Idris Elba has an authoritative streak onscreen, and it’s a quality he has been fostering since his teens. In drama classes at his English boys’ school, he’d always gravitate toward playing fathers, Elba recalls, “and my teacher’s like, ‘You’re just really into it at 14 years old.’ But I was going off instinct. I’m a people watcher.” After directing an army of giant robots in sci-fi action adventure Pacific Rim and an acclaimed performance as Nelson Mandela in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Elba is another leader of men and a father figure of sorts in the drama Beasts of No Nation (opens in select cities and on Netflix Friday), albeit one who is merciless and mercenary. Elba’s Commandant recruits child soldiers in war-torn West Africa to fight his battles, and the film follows the relationship between the orphaned boy Agu (Abraham Attah) and the warlord Agu sees as a “God-like creature,” says director Cary Fukunaga. It’s a role full of ferocity and
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“It was really fascinating to watch an actor who hadn’t done much at all work on his pure instincts.” Idris Elba on his co-star Abraham Attah
depth that’s already generating award-season discussion. Elba’s “vivid portrayal as the charming and scary Commandant makes him a front-runner for a supporting-actor nod,” says Fandango.com Oscar expert Dave Karger. First-time star Attah, 15, could be in the running for best actor as well. “It was really fascinating to watch an actor who hadn’t done much at all work on his pure instincts,” Elba says. “It was actually quite inspirational.” He has an off-camera relationship with the boy that has similarities to the one between Commandant and Agu.
Idris Elba and Abraham Attah are generating Oscar buzz as the principals of Beasts of No Nation.
“He didn’t hate me, but he needed someone to lean on,” Elba says. “I was there as someone who’s been there and done it. It was a really good dynamic and we took it onto film.” Many Elba fans — and some corners of pop culture — have expressed interest in him taking on another commanding role as James Bond. But after the uproar that resulted when 007 author Anthony Horowitz described Elba as “too street” to play the secret agent, the actor says firmly, “I’m over talking about that.” He will play a still-unnamed villain in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond (in theaters July 22, 2016). While not a Trekkie, he has enjoyed it “because I’m almost like a puppet master in this film. They’re using my (acting) tools but in a different way.” Elba’s characters in Trek and Beasts may be “worlds apart,” he says, but the experiences are similar. “What I did as Commandant is steeped in an emotional truth. In this film, there’s a truth because it’s sci-fi. “I don’t want people to watch (Star Trek) and be taken out of it because I’m a dramatic actor. I want you to feel like, ‘That bad guy is out of here.’ ”