A self-tape, a holdout star and a Toronto slate built on acting

Anthony Ippolito won the role of a young Sylvester Stallone with a tape nobody asked for.

The self-tape put the young actor into I Play Rocky, directed by Peter Farrelly, which tells the true story of how Stallone wrote Rocky and would not let anyone else play the lead, according to Variety. The film bowed at Toronto. It opens on 6 November, timed to the 50th anniversary of Rocky.

That refusal is the engine of the story. Stallone had a script that studios wanted. He held out to play the boxer himself.

Toronto also brought Elsinore, directed by Simon Stone and starring Andrew Scott as Ian Charleson, as reported by Variety. Charleson was the Chariots of Fire actor who spent the last year of his life performing Hamlet on stage as AIDS took hold. The part centres on acting under mortal pressure.

Another performance story comes from Jesse Eisenberg with The Debut. It stars Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti and follows a suburban character played by Moore as she finds a passion for performing, according to Variety. Eisenberg directs. Moore leads, Giamatti co-stars.

Family and the stage meet in Closing Night, a family drama from Cody Fern led by Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts and Dianne Wiest. Paulson plays an actress. Watts plays her estranged sister. The film stays close to that fractured bond.

There is a lighter note in Babies, a comedy-drama from Lauren Miller Rogen starring Anna Kendrick. The Toronto line-up also includes Tangles, a hand-drawn animated film about memory loss, as noted by Variety. Drawn frame by frame, it takes a different route into the same subject.

What makes this stand out is the rhyme across the titles. Different genres, different eras. All of them turn on acting, remembering and holding on.