TORONTO -- If you ask Stephen Frears, it's all a big bunch of accidents and coincidences.

The red carpet is out for Frears tonight as the Toronto Film Festival honours the director in a gala tribute, but the man responsible for such movies as My Beautiful Laundrette, The Grifters, Dangerous Liaisons, Hero, The Snapper, and High Fidelity, among others, started out studying law at Cambridge.

The modest and witty Frears, a filmfest regular, is the perfect tribute choice for this important 25th anniversary festival. He's a vet, having unveiled six of his movies to Toronto filmfest audiences over the years. And he's bringing his newest, Liam -- which stars Ian Hart and concerns a Liverpool family during the depression -- to this year's event.

The disheveled Frears, who generally looks as if he's just been pulled backward through a hedge, is a fave with actors and audiences. Some of the celebs expected to sing his praises at Roy Thomson Hall tonight are Julie Walters, John Cusack, John Malkovich, Glenn Close, Uma Thurman and George Clooney. Julia Roberts is probably much too big a star to attend the event, not to mention the fact that her work in Frears' Mary Reilly sank the film, but never mind.

From stage to film

An interest in the stage first led Frears toward his eventual filmmaking career. After finishing up his law degree, he worked in a rep company and the Royal Court Theatre, and then, in 1965, he was hired as an assistant to Karel Reisz, the director of Morgan. He made a 30-minute short in '67 and a feature (Gumshoe) in 1969, and then went off for a decade to make -- quickly and cheaply -- superb movies for British television. In fact, My Beautiful Laundrette, the film that made his name, was initially made for Channel 4.

Like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, Frears -- who is 59 -- has spent most of his career making films about the working class and the disenfranchised. He likes to champion the cultural underdog and kick the stuffing out of the class system. We like that in a director.

Besides Frears, the only others honoured by the Toronto Film Festival with a gala tribute have been Martin Scorsese, Warren Beatty and Robert Duvall.

Though he is shy and not looking forward to being in the spotlight -- and was amazed to have been asked in the first place -- Frears can at least console himself tonight with the fact that all the hubbub takes place in this city. Frears is very fond of Toronto. And vice versa.


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