FASHION Magazine

The Toronto International Film Festival is mostly about cinema (obviously). But TIFF isn’t only about films. There are parties to attend, stars to spot on the street, and brand activations everywhere. It’s high time for all aspects of TIFF to get the same critical attention as the films. Welcome to FASHION Reviews Everything TIFF-related. While […]

The post TIFF 2017: Benedicts with Benedict and the Cast of <em>The Current War</em> appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

By Alexandra Breen

When Winona Ryder speaks, there is defiance in her voice that sounds earned. “I don’t want to do the crazy thing and try to hold onto my youth,” she says while promoting her latest film, The Iceman, at the Toronto International Film Festival. “And I don’t want to work just to work, either. At this point in my life, I just want to be a good person. I’m 40, and I’m psyched, because with age comes experience. I’ve paid some dues and had some ups and downs.”

Ryder’s story started with a childhood spent on a commune with hippie parents and quickly led to her discovery by director Tim Burton, who cast her in the film Beetlejuice. Stellar reviews and a relationship with heartthrob Johnny Depp followed—Who could forget his “Winona Forever”-turned-“Wino Forever” tattoo?—as well as Oscar nods for Little Women and The Age of Innocence and a genre-defining role in Reality Bites. Blockbuster flops were the precursors to Ryder’s now-infamous shoplifting scandal, and she signed on to do a few indie flicks before officially resurfacing in the Oscar-winning Black Swan.

“In the ’90s, I experienced a lot of success, and to be honest I wasn’t expecting it to last. You’re told that you get a couple of years if you’re lucky. It was great, but it came with a lot of pressure,” Ryder reflects. “I wasn’t like, ‘Boo hoo, poor me,’ but I realized that I want a home and I want to spend time with my family and friends. It takes something very special for me to want to leave that now.”

Acts of devotion: Michael Shannon is seriously dedicated to the art of acting.
By Jason Anderson | Photographed by Seiji Fujimori

There’s something in Michael Shannon’s eyes that puts people on edge. Klaus Kinski had it. Christopher Walken has it, too. There’s a wildness there, a quality we’re quick to associate with madness. But that association is limiting, even if it’s true that these actors excel at playing men who’ve come unhinged, like the troubled neighbour in Revolutionary Road, a role that earned Shannon his first Oscar nomination, or Nelson Van Alden, the principled but ever more compromised lawman he plays on HBO’s Prohibition-era mob drama Boardwalk Empire.

The look is suggestive of deep-seated emotion that cannot be controlled or concealed, no matter how hard we try to keep it from the surface. If the eyes are really any kind of window to the soul, this is the force that threatens to shatter the glass. Yet that force has served the 38-year-old actor well, becoming a feature as distinguishing as his six-foot-three frame, his youthful face and a voice that would’ve suited a fire-and-brimstone Southern preacher.