Dakota Fanning, David Oyelowo and other TIFF stars on red-carpet anxiety

TORONTO – Miley Cyrus’s recent vow that she’ll “never do a red carpet again” reflects a complicated relationship between the stars and the synthetic fibres beneath their feet.

In a recent interview with Elle magazine, Cyrus said: “Why, when people are starving, am I on a carpet that’s red? Because I’m ‘important’? Because I’m ‘famous’? That’s not how I roll. It’s like a skit — it’s like Zoolander.”

She later added to E! Online: “It’s really not about the colour of the carpet. It’s more about, especially women, we get yelled at to blow them a kiss, and I don’t feel like blowing you a kiss.”

At the Toronto International Film Festival that wrapped on Sunday, several celebrities admitted that despite appearing on-screen, they never get used to the red-carpet routine: posing and trying to act natural in front of dozens of yelling photographers incessantly firing off flashbulbs.

“Sometimes I think that my face is doing one thing and really it’s doing another,” Dakota Fanning said in an interview at the fest for her film “American Pastoral.”

“Everyone is screaming your name and you look to the left and the people on the right start yelling at you, and you look to the right and the left starts yelling. It’s like, ‘Oh God, oh no, I’m doing something wrong. Oh, they’re mad. I’ve been here for five minutes but they still want more but it’s time to go.’ You almost feel like you’re getting in trouble.”

It wasn’t until just recently that Fanning developed a go-to photo posing technique.

“I’ve tried to be like, ‘Relax. You can look wherever you want, you can take your time. Just relax, be calm,'” she said. “I think my pictures look better because I’ve been practising that the last couple of times.

“After 16 years, I’ve started practising the relaxation.”

For Kathryn Hahn, who was at the fest with the Amazon/Shomi series “Transparent,” posing on a red carpet is “totally the worst.”

“I feel like I’m right back in high school. I just feel as awkward,” she said. “Some people are amazing at it and some people just need to hide behind the character that they’re playing.

“I feel like if I’m just myself, I feel like I don’t know who I am, like, ‘What am I doing? I’m feeling really tense and weird.'”

“Transparent” star Jeffrey Tambor doesn’t mind the posing part.

“But they say, ‘OK, you want to look at it?’ and I go, ‘No thanks, pass.’ … I take the same picture over and over and over again. I just don’t have a lot of moves.

“This face doesn’t do all that much.”

David Oyelowo, who was at TIFF with “Queen of Katwe” and “A United Kingdom,” said he’s been so happy to be on red carpets in the past that he’s looked “a bit goofy” in photos.

“I just look a bit too happy, I kind of look like I’ve won a competition to be on a red carpet,” he said with a laugh. “That’s not the look you want to go for.

“You want to go for a look that kind of says, ‘I’m happy to be here but I deserve to be here,’ and I think I’ve managed to get beyond the prize-winner pose to someone who’s actually a lead actor in a movie.”

Overall, he sees photos as “a celebration of the hard work” and he doesn’t mind them.

“You’re meeting the audience, you’re meeting people who hopefully are going to enthusiastically receive your works,” said the two-time Golden Globe-nominated British star.

“Those photographs are what also bring attention to your movies and I’m so passionate about movies I do being seen.”

Director Kim Nguyen, who was at the fest with “Two Lovers and a Bear,” feels the same way.

But he added: “It’s fun when I don’t pose, because I’m terrible at posing. Basically the way I do it is I talk to people and have a laugh and let the photographers take the picture.

“But if I pose, I just look like a ridiculous chicken.”

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