Jonah Hill: actor, screenwriter, director ... skateboarder?

Yes, growing up in Southern California, Hill found solace on his board in skate parks. So for the past four years, he’s been working on channeling his teenage skating experience into his directorial debut, “Mid90s.”

“It’s always been like, if I was angry or sad or something, I always had this thing to go work on,” Hill, 34, said of the film.

Dan Fogelman’s NBC show “This Is Us” is a critical darling, but reviewers have not been as kind to his new film “Life Itself.”

The ensemble drama, which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, has been skewered by the handful of film critics who have reviewed it so far, notching only a 21% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

That’s of little consequence to Mandy Patinkin, however. The actor -- who joins Olivia Wilde, Oscar Isaac, Antonio Banderas and Annette Bening in the large cast -- said the script “blew his mind” when he first read it.

Filmmaker Claire Denis is a longtime favorite on the international festival circuit who stands to reach a whole new audience with “High Life.” The movie is her first in English, her first science fiction film and has a cast that includes Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Mia Goth and André Benjamin.

The story revolves around a group of death row inmates jettisoned into space on a craft that will not return. One thing leads to another and a man (Pattinson) finds himself the last survivor on the ship, save for the baby girl that he has fathered.

Denis, Pattinson and Goth stopped by the LA Times photo studio in Toronto to talk about the film, which is having its world premiere at TIFF and was acquired for theatrical release by A24.

“Wildlife” marks actor Paul Dano’s debut as a director and screenwriter. With a galvanizing performance by Carey Mulligan, alongside Jake Gyllenhaal, Bill Camp and Ed Oxenbould, the film tells the story of a family in 1960s Montana coming apart in the face of a father’s dashed ambitions and a mother’s reinvigorated sense of self.

When Dano and Mulligan stopped by the L.A. Times studio at the Toronto International Film Festival, he talked about the filmmaker writing the adaption of Richard Ford’s novel in collaboration with Dano’s real-life partner, actress and writer Zoe Kazan. He was drawn to what he called the “spare, strong, kind of lean” style of Richard Ford’s writing.

“Zoe just kind of tore apart my first draft and destroyed all my confidence as a first-time writer and was like, 'Why don’t you let me do a pass?' and I said, ‘Great,'” Dano said. "And then we just traded it back and forth. So we never wrote in the same room ever, we’d sit down and talk for like two hours and then one of us would take it. It was actually a great way to work. I don’t know if she would do it again, I would definitely do it again.”

"La La Land" star Ryan Gosling and Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle are back together for a very different kind of story: a bio-pic about Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

"The Crown" star Claire Foy plays Armstrong's wife in the visually dazzling movie that puts audiences directly into space, and grounds them in the Armstrongs' troubled home life as well.

When the trio sat down to chat at the Los Angeles Times studio at the Toronto International Film Festival, they discussed Chazelle’s approach to filming space in a way moviegoers haven’t quite seen before. And how the project truly took flight before anyone even saw “La La Land.”

Change has been a growing subject of discussion in Hollywood as the industry has grappled with movements such as #OscarsSoWhite and #MeToo.

So when top Hollywood talent stopped by the Los Angeles Times photo and video studio during the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, we asked the stars and filmmakers themselves what change they’d most like to see in the industry.

Not surprisingly, directors including Steve McQueen and Barry Jenkins and talent such as Amandla Stenberg, Jeffrey Wright, Melissa McCarthy, Penelope Cruz, Kelly Marie Tran, Natalie Portman, Olivia Wilde, Geena Davis, Carey Mulligan, Liam Neeson and Brian Tyree Henry had lots to say on the subject.

There’sIno doubt that Stella Meghie’s “The Weekend” is chock full of up-and-coming actors. There’s “Saturday Night Live” alum Sasheer Zamata in the leading role along with “She’s Gotta Have It’s” DeWanda Wise, “Insecure’s” and “The First Purge’s” Y’lan Noel and “Disjointed’s” Tone Bell. 

But despite the fresher energy they all bring, respect is paid to the veteran of their cast, Kym Whitley. When asked about working with the comedic heavyweight, one word came to mind: “Joy.” 

Stella Meghie and Sasheer Zamata bring the black rom-com to Toronto with 'The Weekend'

One of the films with the biggest Oscar buzz at the Toronto International Film Festival is Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” fresh off its award-winning debut at the Venice Film Festival. Its three stars, Nancy Garcia, Marina de Tavira and Yalitza Aparicio, stopped by the Los Angeles Times film and video studio to discuss working with Cuarón.

“It was incredible for me because to start, I didn’t know, not even in my wildest dreams, I'd ever get to do a project like this,” said Garcia. “To work alongside Alfonso, having him help, encourage and motivate me to get the best out of me, I think that was incredible.”

De Tavira added: “For me it was a really transforming experience because I was the only actress in the cast. I was working with non-actors and contrary to what you can think, it was me that had to get in the mood that they were all working [in]... Alfonso was asking me to not think as an actress but as a character and I think, this sounds easy, but it's not.”

Hollywood knows Viola Davis as a fierce force to be reckoned with. Just one Grammy shy of the EGOT and positioned to score more awards consideration for her turn in Steve McQueen’s Nov. 16 heist thriller “Widows,” she’s one of the industry’s most commanding stars.

But, Davis revealed at the L.A. Times studio at the Toronto International Film Festival, making the role her own meant peeling back layers of toughness to find “a level of femininity and vulnerability” that Hollywood has not historically seen in her. 

“I don’t get to play roles in movies where I am rolling around in bed with Liam Neeson,” Davis said with a laugh in the Times studio, flanked by her “Widows” costars Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo and Michelle Rodriguez.

All four praised the McQueen film, co-scripted by the director with novelist and screenwriter Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”), for granting them the rare opportunity to step out of the boxes the industry might otherwise keep them in.

“Sometimes you get a role that helps you to slay certain dragons in your own life, just certain obstacles, and this was one of those roles for me,” Davis said. “It just was a transformative role, a role for me to go to another level of vulnerability.”

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival has an unexpected onslaught of movies centered around female singers. There’s the splashy “A Star Is Born,” starring Lady Gaga, the headier “Vox Lux” with Natalie Portman, the rootsy “Wild Rose” featuring a breakout turn by Jessie Buckley and the yearning “Teen Spirit,” with Elle Fanning.

And then there is “Her Smell,” a wild, churning character study like no other starring Elisabeth Moss as Becky Something, the leader of a fictional ’90s rock group called Something She.

Just like its lead character, the film is aggressive and purposefully obnoxious. It more or less dares an audience to live through its forceful, unrelenting energy — and the self-destructive, pushy pitch of Moss’ performance — for most of the two-hour-plus running time to ultimately get to a place of serenity, self-knowledge and grace.