When Woody Allen was writing the part of a Spaniard who seduces two American tourists, he had Javier Bardem in mind, and the Oscar-winning actor trusted him to avoid Latin-lover stereotypes by adding layers to his character.

The actor, cowriter, and director admits cast members might have felt he was a bit of a tyrant, but as an actor he has always appreciated directors who are in charge of the operation.

The daughter of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis says that she could relate to the dorky character she plays who finds it hard to fit in more than the glamorous world from which she hails.

The Ottawa-born, Montreal-raised actor costars with high-profile names such as Ben Stiller and Jack Black in Tropic Thunder, but all he really wants to do is make Canadian films.

The Vancouver native stars in the weed action movie he cowrote and admits to having smoked a few joints in his time, but he isn’t too concerned about being typecast, instead preferring to keep it loose on set.

The director says that his heart is much more in his writing when it concerns women, and there are plenty of gifted actors waiting for opportunities to work at that high level.

Most actors are somewhat excited about working with Woody Allen. However, Penelope Cruz admits that her interest in working with the famed writer/director was a little greater than most actors.

It’s hard to believe that in 2008 a filmmaker would decide to hire a white actor to play an African American. However, director Ben Stiller liked his Tropic Thunder cowriter Justin Theroux’s idea enough to keep it in the film. Then he went out to find someone to play an actor who had made a conscious choice to don blackface for a movie.

LOS ANGELES - It took James Franco a decade to move from drama back to the genre that launched his career. It also took the prodding of Judd Apatow, who had shown the world that Franco could be funny, and a sacrifice, of sorts, by an old friend.

LOS ANGELES—Before Judd Apatow came along, movie posters and ads would boast of “from the star of…” or at least “from the director of…”, but Apatow and the writers, actors, and coproducers he works with appear to believe that their films are collaborative efforts.

In his new docudrama, the critically acclaimed Canadian filmmaker draws on personal experiences and combines reeanactments and animated sequences with actual footage of his family to paint an honest portrait of his hometown.

The producer, writer, and director of Just Buried describes the stigma of being a Canadian filmmaker and shares the struggles he faced in creating a nontraditional comedy that would appeal to audiences and financial backers alike.

Los Angeles—Batman, both on the small and large screen, has seen several actors playing the same character. Three actors played Catwoman during the run of the Batman television series of the 1960s and that show’s subsequent theatrical release, and the first Warner Bros. series of four movies had the same number of actors playing Batman.

Los Angeles—Mary Steenburgen admits, in a Los Angeles hotel room, that she could relate to a film about grown children who won’t leave home.

As the man in the bat suit, Christian Bale had to address his character's rage and anger before combating diabolical criminals in Gotham City—including Heath Ledger’s Joker—in The Dark Knight.

LOS ANGELES—Guillermo del Toro had been working in the film industry as a writer, producer, and director for more than 20 years before he became an overnight success. He had won awards for several of his films and acclaim from comic-book fans for 2004’s Hellboy.

Most superhero films come from DC Comics or Marvel Comics and have a history that dates back to before most of their fans were born. Hellboy is an exception. The comic was founded in 1994 and has been distributed, since its inception, by Dark Horse Comics, itself founded in 1988.

The classically trained actor was happy to spend hours in the makeup chair each day to transform into the legendary comic-book hero, as he feels more comfortable behind the masks than being himself.

Los Angeles—Can you be the poster boy for losers and then turn yourself into a comic-book superhero? Seth Rogen thinks he can. Rogen, who famously helped to promote the film Knocked Up through a poster of himself that featured the caption ‘What if this guy got you pregnant?’, is getting ready to play the Green Hornet.

Los Angeles—We may be more than two weeks away from the July 18 release date of the new Batman movie The Dark Knight, but there is a lot of buzz about its chances of winning awards.

LOS ANGELES—Steve Carell appears to be riding a successful sitcom to movie stardom. He has three years left on his contract for the U.S. series The Office and his latest film, Get Smart, will open in theatres on Friday (June 20). Life is good. However, the 45-year-old actor told reporters at a recent Los Angeles news conference that he came to success a little later than he might have hoped.

LOS ANGELES—It’s been 42 years since Alan Arkin first took a lead role in a film, but he admits, in an L.A. hotel room, that he is still not completely sure if he will work again. “I don’t think any actor really believes he will get another job. I remember hearing a story from a best friend of George C. Scott and she was visiting him a month after he won the Oscar for Patton. She said she heard screaming and went to see what was going on.

LOS ANGELES—More than four decades after Dustin Hoffman became a superstar with The Graduate, he is sitting in an L.A. hotel room telling reporters how it feels to be a rookie. That occurred when he was doing voice-over work as Shifu, a red panda who is a kung-fu master, for Kung Fu Panda, which is currently playing in theatres. He says that although he had done voice work for live-action animals in the film Racing Stripes, he had never added his talents to an animation feature.

Terence Stamp was just 23 when he garnered an Oscar nomination for playing an angelic but doomed seaman in Billy Budd. He followed that up with diverse roles in some of the most acclaimed films of the early 1960s, including The Collector, Poor Cow, and Far From the Madding Crowd. Then he just vanished. Legend had it that he had fled London after a bad breakup with the British model Jean Shrimpton and was wandering around India alone and bitter. He was 29.

LOS ANGELES—Hollywood, best known for taking the easy way out whenever possible, has never been particularly good at allowing minority actors the opportunity of playing nonethnic characters. Lucy Liu, who grew up in Brooklyn with immigrant parents, has managed to forge a career by mixing Asian roles with parts that could have been played by anyone. She first gained fame by playing an Asian American lawyer on Ally McBeal, but she went from there to movie stardom as one of Charlie’s Angels.

Los Angeles—When Kung Fu Panda star Jack Black told a Cannes film festival press conference that his costar Angelina Jolie was pregnant with twins, no one thought to ask what a cartoon was doing at the eminent event. It was probably assumed that if you have movie stars you can go wherever you want.

LOS ANGELES—You would think that a 23-year-old actor might be somewhat concerned about getting typecast after playing a cartoonlike character in a huge special-effects movie. However, Emile Hirsch doesn’t see it that way. Hirsch, who came to the film Speed Racer from an acclaimed performance as a doomed adventurer in last year’s Into the Wild, says that he thinks things have changed in the past few years and that today’s actors have some advantages over counterparts from other eras.

NEW YORK CITY—Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow would seem like an odd couple to take on lead roles in a big summer film. Both are better known for appearing in films that have budgets about equal to the size of the salaries they probably earned for costarring in Iron Man, in which Downey plays the title character and alter ego Tony Stark and Paltrow plays Stark’s supportive assistant, Pepper Potts. (The film, directed by Jon Favreau, is currently playing at Vancouver theatres.)

If movies were like sports, instead of Oscars we would have Most Valuable Player awards. So the early leader for the 2009 MVP award would be Robert Downey Jr., since Iron Man, which opened last weekend, appears to be that cinematic rarity: a critical and financial success.

An unlikely movie star with a troubled past, Iron Man’s Robert Downey Jr. is not just up, he’s so damn heroic.

LOS ANGELES—When it comes to being a Hollywood screwup, timing is everything, according to Christina Ricci. The actor, who was a child star thanks to two Addams Family movies, says that she doesn’t look down on young actors who become deer in the camera lights. The 28-year-old says—in the Long Beach Convention Centre to publicize her latest film, Speed Racer, during the Toyota Long Beach Grand Prix—that had she been born a few years later, she, too, would be fodder for the tabloids.

In a Straight.com exclusive, Lost's Matthew Fox says that while his character has had issues in past episodes, things will get worse before they get better.

Los Angeles—When David Schwimmer went looking for someone to star in a movie to be set in England, his first choice was a British actor named Simon Pegg. Schwimmer had been told that the only way to get the funding to make Run Fat Boy Run, based on a story by American actor-writer Michael Ian Black about a lazy man who decides to run a marathon, was to set Black’s story in London rather than New York City.

Los Angeles—When George Clooney started out in films, he was favourably compared to several deceased Hollywood icons. He was going to be the “next Clark Gable” and was the “new Gary Cooper” and eventually became, according to Time Magazine, “the last movie star”. Now he has gone back in time as a director, fully aware that his work will be compared to the men who made the movies in old Hollywood.

LOS ANGELES—Former lovers George Clooney and Renée Zellweger really are “just friends”. Friendly enough, in fact, to work together for several months in small towns in North Carolina, where Clooney directed himself and Zellweger in Leatherheads, which opens next Friday (April 4) in Vancouver. The movie, set in 1925, tells the story of a professional football star (Clooney) who signs a college phenom (John Krasinski) in order to help his team survive.

LOS ANGELES—Stop-Loss is arguably the most antiwar film that’s been released since George W. Bush declared his “war on terror”. It stars Ryan Phillippe as Brandon King, a decorated soldier who thinks his contract to leave the army is valid, and that he won’t have to return to Iraq. However, he discovers that since there is no draft, enlisted soldiers can be sent back to fight against their will, a phenomenon known as stop-loss.

It makes sense that Kevin Spacey would produce a film about gambling. He knows a little about taking risks.

It’s arguable that only a handful of individuals are as famous for being Scottish as a Vancouver-born actor whose parents were immigrants from Northern Ireland. James Doohan’s performance as Scotty in the iconic TV and movie series Star Trek is still seen by millions of people every week in reruns of the show and replays of the movies. Scots will probably be even less pleased with the latest choice to play Scotty. Simon Pegg, an Englishman from

Las Vegas—When producer Kevin Spacey and director Robert Luketic went looking for the all-American boy for their film 21, they assumed they would find someone, well, American. But not surprisingly in a film industry that has so many Brits, Canadians, Irish, and Australians playing Yankee Doodle dandies, their best bet was an Englishman with what Luketic calls “a really bad audition tape”.

Los Angeles—More than eight years after Kimberly Peirce swept the new-filmmaker awards with Boys Don’t Cry, she has finally completed a second feature. In an L.A. hotel room, she says that she didn’t want to follow up the Oscar-winning story of doomed transgender youth Brandon Teena with a film that was less interesting.

“I don’t know what people expect of me,” Renée Zellweger says in an elevator at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. “I really don’t and I hope that came across.” Zellweger, who costars in Leatherheads with the film’s director George Clooney and The Office’s John Krasinski, has just left a room full of journalists where she was asked how she feels about the expectations of fans and coworkers when they meet her. She said it was the hardest part of her life.

TORONTO—The list of films about the Holocaust that have received Academy Award nominations is not short, and includes mentions in almost every category. There have been several different approaches to the death of six million Jews in European concentration camps during the Second World War.

LOS ANGELES—Reese Witherspoon decided early in her acting career that she should be prepared for the possibility that movie offers could eventually stop coming. In her mid-20s, Witherspoon, who is now 31, cofounded Type A Films with a friend, Debra Siegel. It took four years to get the first film made and into theatres, but the company’s debut picture, Penelope, opens on Friday (February 29).

LOS ANGELES—Most actors have appeared in at least one sports movie in their careers. Paul Newman, Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, and Will Smith all famously played boxers. Dennis Quaid has played a halfback, a quarterback, and a pitcher, and Tom Cruise played football and hustled pool alongside Newman. Tom Hanks coached women’s baseball and Clint Eastwood coached a woman boxer (Hilary Swank) to an Oscar.

Damn foreigners.

LOS ANGELES—Things have changed for Forest Whitaker. A year after winning the best-actor Oscar for The Last King of Scotland, he is getting a lot of scripts while hoping to resurrect his directing career. He originally made the choice to direct in case there was a time when he couldn’t find work as an actor.

LOS ANGELES—André Benjamin’s résumé doesn’t suggest he would be a good fit for a comedy about basketball misfits in the 1970s. Initially famous for being half of the hip-hop duo Outkast, he moved into starring roles in movies three years ago in a quartet of violent dramas: Be Cool, Revolver, Four Brothers, and Idlewild.

LOS ANGELES—Up close, Jack Black looks like someone who might have problems with technology. He has perfected an on-screen image as a slob in most of his recent films, and he doesn’t look much different in person. So when director Michel Gondry sought an actor who could play a slacker who might be hanging out at a Passaic, New Jersey, video store and who hates DVDs, Black was an easy choice.

LOS ANGELES—At 53, Dennis Quaid still has the all-American looks that helped him to play almost every iconic American character Hollywood has to offer. The list includes soldiers, cowboys, astronauts, detectives, football heroes, baseball heroes, a U.S. president, and American legends Sam Houston (The Alamo) and Doc Holliday (Wyatt Earp).

LOS ANGELES—French director Michel Gondry was the toast of Hollywood in 2004 when he won an Oscar for writing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A year later, he followed it up with a second successful American film, the documentary Dave Chappelle’s Block Party. Then, at the height of his U.S. popularity, he left the country. In an L.A.