Festival Darling

At 9:20 a.m. on the first Friday of September’s Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Kristin Booth arrives at the Hazelton Hotel’s One Restaurant to meet me for breakfast. Looking bright with blonde hair done and soft makeup freshly applied, and loaded down with her purse and colourful shopping bags — orange and Holt Renfrew pink — she looks like a woman about to have an extremely busy day.

She’s bubbly, down-to-earth and professional; she’s done this before — TIFF is becoming an annual blitz of interviews, promotion, entertainment show corresponding and red carpets for Booth, who had two films in the 2009 festival. Before ordering OJ, a latte and lemon ricotta pancakes, she quickly tapes a segment for Entertainment Tonight Canada (they’re following her and her crazy schedule throughout the fest).

“Yeah, it’s a bit nuts,” she says. “Yesterday was a packed day of interviews and stuff and then today’s really packed in the morning and then sort of levels off in the afternoon. So I’m hoping that I can go home and then I’m debating not going to the parties I’m supposed to go to tonight.”

TIFF may be a 10-day escape for cinephiles and scenesters, but for those in the movie-making trade it’s a jam-packed business conference, and for Canadians behind and in front of the camera, it’s their most important networking event. It’s non-stop and can be exhausting. Booth’s movies premiere three days apart, making the usually front-loaded hype of the festival even more intense. Her films are Crackie, for which she donned a “refined” Newfoundland accent to play hairdressing-school mentor to a young girl trying to find her way, and Defendor, the Woody Harrelson-starring tale of an “endearingly” slow man (Harrelson) who decides to help save his city (Hamilton, Ont.), by donning a cape and fighting crime. Booth, 35, plays mother figure (she stresses the word “figure”) to Harrelson, who is 13 years her senior.

In an atypical turn, both Canadian-shot films are actually set north of the border as well ­— a trend we’ve seen recently on the small screen with shows like Flashpoint. The fact that Defendor is set in the Steel City is particularly special, says Booth. “It’s not really a traditional Canadian film,” she says. “It’s not about Canada in any way, and they decided to do that, so I think that’s great. We should showcase our country and our cities in film.”

It’s not Booth’s first time pulling festival double-duty. She was promoting two films in 2007 as well, This Beautiful City where she played a crack-addicted prostitute, and Young People F—king, the movie that won her a Genie award for her comedic performance as Abby, one half of a long-term couple trying to spice up its sex life.

“It seems each year that I have films it gets busier and busier, so I guess that’s a good thing…” says Booth. “But it’s all good and these are the kinds of times that you dream of and want. So I’m not complaining, at all.”

Booth, who grew up in tiny Kinkora, Ont., close to Ontario’s theatre capital, Stratford, began her professional acting career on the stage at age 12. She studied theatre at Ryerson University, and got her first big acting break on Canadian television in the series Daring & Grace: Teen Detectives, in 1999. She now has a lengthy resume featuring numerous films, and television shows such as M.V.P. and Producing Parker.