Actors Talked Into the Wee Hours

While a recently de-closeted boy band star was mixing it up with Inuit the other night, two sworn enemies of Batman were conspiring further uptown.

In other words, the film festival started by striking, as it does sometimes, like cupid—love at first right place at the right time; a peculiar period when the shoulder-rubbing can be unexpected and the freaky juxtapositions provide an infinite well of comedy.

Over at the Liberty Grand, during the post-opening gala party—a film fest tradition that is the Toronto-in-September answer to gung-ho golfers hitting the links in Augusta every April—more than a few heads turned when Lance Bass arrived.

Given that the film being feted was The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, a period movie in which the snow is the main star and the language spoken is Inuktitut, the appearance of the former 'Nsync star provided for a delish meld of high and low. And the fact that Lance had in tow his boyfriend, Reichen Lehmkuhl, a chap best known for winning a particular cycle of TV's Amazing Race? Doubly delish.

"I'm talking to people here," Bass was heard to say when grilled what he was doing at TIFF. Trying to get investors, he said, for two features he's trying to make. (Aha! He was, in fact, testament to an ancient truism at the festival: the one that says while civilians are trying to schmooze celebrities here, celebrities are often trying to schmooze investors! It's what gives Toronto such an indelible circus atmosphere at this time of year.)

And though the frosted-haired entertainer is most famous recently for a People cover that read, "I'm Gay," celebrity has its own calculus, and hence, he almost managed to steal the show at the Liberty Grand. Out, you might say, and then Inuit!

Oh, well. "Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate." So wrote Emily Dickinson. And while the spread was a melange downtown, some blocks up there was also plenty to snack on. That's where at Lobby, on Bloor, a late-night buddy-buddy act formed between Heath Ledger and Cillian Murphy.

The guys were at different booths at the back of the newly redone bar, but, once introduced, they certainly weren't. The two of them, I can confirm, got on like Buckingham Palace on fire.

The Irishman is here starring in a film that was a Cannes favourite, The Wind That Shakes the Barley. Heath, the Australian, is here promoting the intriguing Candy. But for those of us who know our Variety, there was a subtext to their fast-growing acquaintance: While Cillian played Mr. Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins last year, Heath, nominated more recently for Brokeback Mountain, has already signed on to be in the upcoming Bruce Wayne sequel. As the Joker.

 
Were some Batty tips passed on? We certainly think so. In fact, Cillian, who's the biggest acting name out of Ireland since Colin Farrell and is the spooky-eyed fella from films such as Red Eye and Breakfast on Pluto, didn't leave his Gotham cohort until about 3:30 a.m.

"His driver was waiting for him for hours," a spy tells me. "Because he said he was leaving hours ago."
Of Heath—who earlier in the day stopped by solo at Il Posto in Yorkvile, where he read a book and ate some soup—our spy tells us this: "He's a ratty-looking dude."

Certainly, that night he was in a very different mood from earlier that day, when he told a Canadian Press reporter than he and wife Michelle Williams are not into partying.

For the record, Ledger told Canadian Press: "I'm up at 5:30 or 6 every morning and in bed at 9. But it's fine, and the one thing I realize is that before Matilda, we were just sleeping in too long. We were missing out on so much of the day. I get much more done now. I feel more focused. And I actually need to go to bed at 9 now—I feel it in my bones."