John Cusack talks Maps to the Stars and why he loves TIFF
/John Cusack loved working with director David Cronenberg in his latest film, Maps to the Stars. In the star studded film, Julianne Moore gives a wonderful performance as Havana Segrand, a desperate and insecure middle-aged actress scheming remorselessly to land the lead in a remake of a film her mother starred in years ago. She divulges a flood of inner fears and childhood trauma to her therapist, Dr. Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), a TV psychologist and self-help guru with a stable of celebrity clients. But Weiss has problems of his own, including a teenaged movie-megastar son whose career is already threatened by his out-of-control ego and drug problems. Also starring is Mia Wasikowska as Agatha, a pyromaniac who gets hired as Havana's assistant based on a Twitter friendship with Carrie Fisher (playing herself ); and Jerome (Robert Pattinson), a limo driver, struggling actor and aspiring screenwriter. Cusack was at the Toronto International Film Festival with two projects — Maps to the Stars, in which he plays a self-help guru whose son is a child actor, and Love & Mercy, in which he plays Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Here is our interview.