By BARBARA VANCHERI, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Keira Knightley did exhaustive homework, practiced making alarming, contorted faces in her bathroom mirror and then contacted director David Cronenberg.

"I wanted it to be as shocking as possible. ... I sort of came up with a couple of options and then got on Skype and went, 'All right, what do you fancy?,' and he went, 'That one.' "

Actress Rooney Mara comes from a mixed football family -- Pittsburgh Steelers on mom Kathleen's side, New York Giants on dad Chris' side -- but her families' dealings with the press offered little preparation for the media blitz she's experiencing for her role in "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."
"It's such a different world, I don't think anything they could have said would ever prepare someo

Zombies may be slow moving, but the campaign to save a key backdrop in the opening scenes of "Night of the Living Dead" is picking up steam, money and an endorsement from director-screenwriter George A. Romero.

Actress Shailene Woodley has had an agent since age 5, played a live-action version of American Girl doll Felicity on TV and is wrapping her fourth season of "The Secret Life of the American Teenager."

But she admits to a short-lived case of the jitters over George Clooney, who plays her father in "The Descendants."

TORONTO - For some actors, film festivals are like a citywide game of musical chairs.

They move from this hotel to that one, from this red carpet to that photo shoot, from this press conference to that cozy Q&A, but actor Viggo Mortensen stops the music and asks the five reporters sitting at a table where each lives.

Let's hear it for the boy ... again.

Twenty-seven years after Kevin Bacon cut loose, "Footloose" is back with a new cast, favorite old songs and, somehow in these litigious times, a ban on public dancing and loud music.

TORONTO - Seth Rogen may have a laugh like a machine gun and happily answer David Letterman's questions about smoking weed, but, it turns out, he's a darned good friend.

TORONTO - Three decades before Billy Beane would reinvent baseball and be portrayed on the big screen by Brad Pitt, he was a high-school kid bound for college.

TORONTO - When you play a character known simply as "Driver" in an action caper called "Drive," it's a natural question. So, Ryan Gosling, how much driving did you do?

"I drove myself to set. I drove myself home," he said with a sly smile.

Talk about being ahead of the curve.

Six years ago, filmmaker Robert Rodriguez made a movie called "Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl," tapping into a trio of future trends. It was a family film, in 3-D and starred then-unknown Taylor Lautner, today a "Twilight" heartthrob.

Now, the director has graduated to the next level with "Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D."