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Jennifer Lopez Slays TIFF Red Carpet as She Unveils 'Unstoppable'

Actor and singer Jennifer Lopez arrives for the screening of the movie ‘Unstoppable’ during the 49th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), in Toronto, Canada, 06 September 2024. EPA/EDUARDO LIMA
Actor and singer Jennifer Lopez arrives for the screening of the movie ‘Unstoppable’ during the 49th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), in Toronto, Canada, 06 September 2024. EPA/EDUARDO LIMA
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Jennifer Lopez Slays TIFF Red Carpet as She Unveils 'Unstoppable'

Actor and singer Jennifer Lopez arrives for the screening of the movie ‘Unstoppable’ during the 49th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), in Toronto, Canada, 06 September 2024. EPA/EDUARDO LIMA
Actor and singer Jennifer Lopez arrives for the screening of the movie ‘Unstoppable’ during the 49th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), in Toronto, Canada, 06 September 2024. EPA/EDUARDO LIMA

Jennifer Lopez infused the Toronto film festival with a dose of A-list glamor Friday at the world premiere of her new movie, true-story sports drama "Unstoppable," which earned a rousing ovation.
The 55-year-old actress, singer and dancer was making her first red carpet appearance since the announcement of her divorce from Ben Affleck, who co-produced the film with best friend Matt Damon but was not in attendance.
And she did not disappoint, wearing a skin-baring metallic silver gown with seemingly nothing but giant black velvet bows holding it together, her hair long and loose. Sky-high silver platform heels finished the look.
In "Unstoppable," Lopez plays Judy, the mother of high school wrestler Anthony Robles (Jharrel Jerome) who, though born with only one leg, doggedly pursued -- and achieved -- his dream of becoming a US university champion.
Oscar nominee Don Cheadle and Michael Pena play his demanding coaches, and Bobby Cannavale plays his abusive stepfather, who repeatedly puts the family in jeopardy.
"Unstoppable" tells Robles's inspiring story while also delving into the difficulties of his family life, and showcasing his close relationship with his mother.
The film had several applause moments in the buildup to Robles's winning run to a college championship for Arizona State University. Then, as the credits rolled, Robles himself, in the theater, earned a standing ovation from the crowd at Roy Thomson Hall.
"When I read the script, I felt like so many women, including myself, could relate to the struggles that she had gone through in her life," Lopez said in a question-and-answer session after the screening.
"This story being a Latino story, being so inspiring -- it was just something that kind of grabbed me."
Jerome said he trained for five months, including with Robles on the wrestling mat.
"As an actor, it is one of the most daunting tasks to portray somebody that is real," he said.
"Unstoppable" was one of the marquee events of day two at the Toronto International Film Festival, the largest in North America, which offers a mix of Oscar-bait movies, feel-good family fare and searing documentaries.
This year marks a return to normal for the event, after twin strikes by actors and writers kept top talent from promoting their work here last year.
Lopez is just one of the major stars visiting Canada's biggest city for the festival.
Ben Stiller, Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry hit the red carpet on Thursday night. Also expected are Angelina Jolie, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Salma Hayek, Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman.
'The Last Showgirl'
Earlier, Gia Coppola debuted her latest effort behind the camera, "The Last Showgirl," starring Pamela Anderson as veteran Vegas performer Shelley, who is left in despair when her show is abruptly canceled.
After a 30-year run dancing half-naked in sequins and high heels in a traditional Sin City show, Shelley must figure out what the future holds.
Coppola -- the granddaughter of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola -- goes beyond the bright lights of America's favorite gambling playground to show the harsh realities of the entertainment industry and what happens to those it discards, especially women.
"I think I’ve been getting ready my whole life for this role," Anderson told the audience after the screening.
The "Baywatch" actress quipped that it was the first time she'd been offered a script that was "coherent."
Jamie Lee Curtis teared up as she spoke about the film. She plays Annette, a onetime dancer and Shelley's best friend who ends up waitressing to make ends meet -- and frittering away her hard-won earnings on bets.
"It's a movie about dreams and going after your dreams," only to discover they may never be realized, said the Oscar winner.

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‘The Brutalist’ Doesn’t Work without Guy Pearce

Guy Pearce poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film "The Brutalist" in London, Wednesday, Jan.15, 2025. (AP)
Guy Pearce poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film "The Brutalist" in London, Wednesday, Jan.15, 2025. (AP)
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‘The Brutalist’ Doesn’t Work without Guy Pearce

Guy Pearce poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film "The Brutalist" in London, Wednesday, Jan.15, 2025. (AP)
Guy Pearce poses for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film "The Brutalist" in London, Wednesday, Jan.15, 2025. (AP)

Over the years, Guy Pearce has been good in most all things. But he’s been particularly good at playing characters with a refined disposition who harbor darker impulses underneath.

That was true of his breakout performance in “L.A. Confidential" as a squeaky clean police detective whose ambitions outstrip his ethics. It was true of his dashing upper-class bachelor in “Mildred Pierce.” And it’s most definitely true of his mid-Atlantic tycoon in “The Brutalist.”

“I’m really aware of how precarious we are as human beings,” Pearce says. “Good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. Moment to moment, we’re trying to just get through the day. We’re trying to be good. And we can do good things for ourselves and other people, but pretty easily we can be tipped off course.”

That sense of duality has served Pearce’s characters well, especially his men of class who turn out to have less of it than they seem. His Harrison Lee Van Buren in “The Brutalist” may be Pearce’s most colossally two-faced concoction yet. If Brady Corbet’s film, which was nominated for 10 Oscars on Thursday, is one of the best films of the year, it’s Pearce’s performance that gives the movie its disquieting shiver.

Pearce’s Van Buren is a recognizable kind of villain: a well-bred aristocrat who, at first, is a benevolent benefactor to Adrien Brody’s architect László Tóth. But what begins as a friendship — Tóth, a Holocaust survivor is nearly destitute when they meet — turns increasingly ugly, as Van Buren’s patronage, warped by jealousy and privilege, turns into a creeping sense of ownership over Tóth. The psychodrama eventually boils over in a grim, climactic scene in which Van Buren pronounces Tóth “just a lady of the night.”

“What was great to discuss with Brady is that he is actually a man of taste,” said Pearce in a recent interview. “He’s a man of class and a man of sophistication. He’s not just a bull in a China shop. He’s not just about greed, taking, taking, taking. It’s probably as much of a curse as anything that he can recognize beauty and he can recognize other people’s artistry.”

For his performance, the 57-year-old Pearce on Thursday landed his first Oscar nomination – a long-in-coming and perhaps overdue honor for the character actor of “Memento,” “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The King’s Speech.” For the Australian-born Pearce, such recognitions are as awkward as they are rewarding. He long ago decided Hollywood stardom wasn’t for him.

“I get uncomfortable with that, to be honest,” he says. “I’m really happy with doing a good performance. I can genuinely say within myself I’ve done a good job. Equally, I know when I’ve done a (bad) job. But I’m also well aware of how a performance can appear good purely because of the tone of the film. I might have done exactly the same performance in another movie with not such a good director, and people might have gone, ‘That was full-on but whatever.’ Whereas in this film, we are all better than we actually are because the film has integrity to it that elevates us all.”

Like F. Murray Abraham’s Saleri in “Amadeus,” Peace’s Van Buren has quickly ascended the ranks of great cinema villains to artists. The character likewise has some basis in reality, albeit extrapolated from a much different time and place. Corbet and Mona Fastvold, who are married and wrote “The Brutalist” together, were fueled by their hardships with financiers on their previous film, 2018's “Vox Lux.”

“We didn’t have a Van Buren but we certainly had our fill of complicated relationships with the people who hold the purse strings,” says Fastvold. “There’s a sense of: I have ownership of the project because I’m paying for it, and I almost have ownership of you.”

Pearce has been around the movie business long enough to shake hands with plenty of wealthy men putting money toward a film production. But he says none of his own experiences went into “The Brutalist.”

“There’s always this slew of producers at a higher level than us who come and visit the set,” Pearce says. “I’m polite and I go, ‘Hi, nice to meet you. Thanks.’ But I’m a little caught up with what I’m doing. Then three years later you’ll meet someone who says, ‘You know, I was a producer on “L.A. Confidential.”’ Ah, were you?”

Pearce, who lives in the Netherlands, has generally kept much of Hollywood at arm's length. In conversation, he tends to be chipper and humble — more interested in talking Aussie rules football than the Oscar race. “Any chance to have a kick, I'll have a kick,” he says with smile.

That youthful spirit Pearce tends to apply to his acting as well. Pearce, who started performing in the mid-'80s on the long-running Australian soap opera “Neighbors,” doesn't like to be precious about performing.

“If I’m hanging on to it all day, it’s exhausting,” Pearce says. “The thing that still exists for me is using our imagination, which is kind of a childlike venture. I think there’s something valuable about that even as adults. I think you can be all ages at all times.”

Pearce compares receiving the script from Corbet to “The Brutalist” to when Christopher Nolan approached him 25 years ago. Both times, he went back to watch the director's earlier films and quickly decided this was an opportunity to pounce at.

In digging into Van Buren, Pearce was guided less by real-life experience than the script. The hardest entry way to the character, he says, was the voice. “Thankfully,” Pearce says, “I’m friends with Danny Huston and he’s got a wonderfully old-fashioned voice.” He and Corbet didn't speak much about the director's hardships on “Vox Lux.”

“I know that it was troubled. Brady is going to have trouble on every film he makes, I reckon, because he is such a visionary,” says Pearce. “I know on this there were producers trying to get him to cut the time down. Of course, all those producers now are going, ‘I was with him all the way.’”

To a certain degree, Pearce says, he doesn't fully understand a performance while he's doing it. He's more likely to understand it fully afterward while watching. Take that “lady of the night scene.” While filming, Pearce felt he was saying that line to put Tóth in his place. “But when I watched it, I went: ‘I’m just telling myself. I’m purely telling myself,’” he says. “There’s something even more distasteful about it.”

It's ironic, in a way, that Van Buren, a man bent on control, is played so indelibly by an actor who seeks to impose so little of it, himself.

“There’s a performative element to Van Buren. He exhausts himself because he’s trying to dominate, to be the one in charge, be Mr. Charming,” Pearce says. “I don’t think he can ever enter a room without being self-conscious. That’s an exhausting way to be, I reckon.”