For director Jonathan Levine, the best moment of making his comedy/drama The Wackness came when Ben Kingsley agreed to play the central role of a drug-addled Manhattan psychiatrist. Levine, a young filmmaker with one unreleased teen horror film to his credit (the festival-circuit favourite All the Boys Love Mandy Lane), knew he had just stepped up to the major leagues.

The thought of working with an actor of that stature is more intimidating than actually doing it, Levine said. It also helped that Kingsley was outfitted with a wig of shoulder-length curls. "Before he got to set, I was all freaked out about it. We all were. The most intimidated I was was when I would talk to him in his trailer before makeup or after makeup, because in the wig and the costume he's kind of a schlub."