From Rocketman to Bridesmaids: Stars Reveal the Films That Shaped Them

At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, the BBC invited a parade of actors into its photo studio and asked a simple question: which film, in your own career or someone else’s, means the most to you? The answers ranged from career-defining breakthroughs to deeply personal reckonings.

For Taron Egerton, it was playing Elton John in Rocketman. “Rocketman was a time in my life where I really felt a sense of being able to expand into my own creativity,” he said, explaining the role challenged his assumption that a leading man must appear “unimpeachable and perfect and slightly veneered.” Instead, he came to believe that “the things that you perceive about yourself to be your weaknesses actually end up being your greatest strength.”

Rebel Wilson pointed to a very different kind of turning point — her first Hollywood job, Bridesmaids. “I was just a girl from Australia, and came to America with one suitcase, and then I booked this movie,” she recalled, describing the chance to improvise alongside director Paul Feig and producer Judd Apatow as “awesome.”

Kristine named Sharp Stick, Lena Dunham’s deeply personal film in which she played a woman whose growth had been arrested by trauma. “I’m very interested in exploring trauma and the ways people cope with it,” she said, calling the experience “healing in its own way.” Jonah chose The Eden Express, a yet-to-be-released film about Kurt Vonnegut’s son: “It’s a really beautiful thing when a film goes out into the world, because then it becomes other people’s. But at the moment it still belongs to [all of us who worked on it].”

Jessica picked The Royal Hotel, Kitty Green’s low-budget study of sexual power dynamics and binge-drinking culture, shot in the Australian outback. “It had a shoestring budget, and we were in the Australian outback pretending it was summer in our bikinis, and getting blasted by freezing cold winds and sand,” she said. “So it was a challenge, but I loved everything about it.”

Not every answer was career-focused. Laura and Rhys both pointed to Onwards and Sideways, in which they play characters navigating Parkinson’s disease. “Rarely am I conscious of a movie sort of changing my cellular structure, and this one certainly did: I came out a different person,” Laura said, adding she learned the condition has “40 different symptoms that can take many different combinations.” Rhys called it rare to feel a film is “genuinely going to impact people in a positive, long-lasting way.”

For Air Bud franchise producer Robert Vince, the most meaningful film outside his own work was Life Is Beautiful — “because it’s so positive and life-affirming.” His canine co-star Buddy, he joked, picked the original Air Bud film instead, though “he’s a little jealous of the original star.”

Sidse recalled her 1997 debut, the improvised black-and-white film Let’s Get Lost, for which she invented her own storyline. “I was very obsessed with revenge back in the day — I thought it was a really juicy, nice feeling to play on,” she said. “It will always be very special to me for that reason.”

Source: BBC News