Rose Byrne, left, and Hugh Dancy are paired in the offbeat indie comedy/drama Adam. Rose Byrne, left, and Hugh Dancy are paired in the offbeat indie comedy/drama Adam. (Julia Griner/Fox Searchlight Pictures)

If you want to catch a couple of stars rising in unison, you could do no better than to check out the little indie film Adam. An idiosyncratic romantic comedy, it pairs nouveau British heartthrob Hugh Dancy, playing a young man with Asperger Syndrome, and sultry Australian actress Rose Byrne as the young woman who falls in love with him.

Acting Asperger’s: Learning to portray Adam

Writer-director Max Mayer first learned about Asperger Syndrome while listening to an interview with an Asperger’s individual on National Public Radio.

“He was talking about his sense of isolation in the world, of kind of peering in at human relationships and behaviour and trying to figure out how everybody knew when to smile and when to talk or not to talk,” Mayer recalls. “Most people with Asperger’s have difficulty reading non-verbal signs and also have difficulty with what psychologists call ‘theory of mind,’ which basically means the instinctive ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes. I was really moved by what this young man said.”

Mayer, whose marriage was breaking down at the time, also saw Asperger’s as an extreme form of the kind of communication problems in any relationship. “I felt like this was a way of communicating the general circumstance of all of us sitting up in our own brains, desiring to be connected to other people, but not being wired to know what is in the other person’s heart or mind.”

Before production on Adam, he and actor Hugh Dancy connected with a New York support group for Asperger’s called Adaptations.

“They invited us to a meeting and were very excited about what we were going to do,” Mayer says. “They were extremely open. I think the biggest thing that Hugh and I realized is that people with Asperger’s are as individual as anybody else. So it allowed him to bring some of his imagination to bear on the character of Adam.”

Written and directed by New York theatre vet Max Mayer, the movie had its premiere last winter at the Sundance festival, where Fox Searchlight snapped it up. The studio, capitalizing on the upward trajectory of the two young stars, has sent them and Mayer on a whirlwind press tour to promote it.

When Dancy enters the rooftop bar of Toronto’s Park Hyatt hotel, wearing a blazer and a disarming smile, he couldn’t be more different from the socially awkward character he plays in the film. Wiry, tousled-haired, he looks like a young, British Sean Penn and exudes some of the same cocky confidence. Byrne, on the other hand, seems exactly like Ellen Parsons, the greenhorn lawyer she portrays in the hit TV series Damages — low-key, reticent, an observer. A Pre-Raphaelite vision with long dark tresses and a white summer dress, Byrne sits demurely next to Dancy and listens as he speaks. Within a few minutes, however, he has her breaking into schoolgirl giggles and affecting a broad version of her Oz accent. Clearly, the two have an off-screen rapport to match their onscreen romance.

Adam, which opens Aug. 7, is a showcase for Dancy, an opportunity for the actor to prove he’s more than just another swoony Prince Charming (Ella Enchanted) or a Hugh Grant clone (Confessions of a Shopaholic). He plays Adam Raki, a 29-year-old New Yorker afflicted with Asperger’s, a high-functioning form of autism. These individuals are often intellectually gifted but lacking in basic social skills and the ability to “read” — and empathize with — other people.

Adam is a brilliant electronic technician who designs toys for a living and spends his spare time absorbed in an array of hobbies, from astronomy to theatre history. Emotionally, however, he’s at a total loss. When Beth (Byrne), a teacher and aspiring writer, moves into his apartment building, he misses all the obvious cues that would give him an opportunity to start up a friendship.

Despite the initial miscommunications, the two connect, and Beth is soon swayed by Adam’s geeky charm. He stages a planetarium show for her in his apartment, and takes her on a nocturnal jaunt to Central Park to watch a family of raccoons. In his obsession with minutiae, he’s like your average fanboy times 10, but his ingenuousness makes him a refreshing change from Beth’s previous boyfriends. “He can’t really imagine that someone might lie to him,” Dancy says. “And by the same token, he can’t really tell lies. So there’s a sweetness to that.”

Adam and Beth check out a family of raccoons in the film Adam. Adam and Beth check out a family of raccoons in the film Adam. (Julia Griner/Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Those who know Dancy from his previous work — Ella, Shopaholic, the Elizabeth I miniseries — should be impressed at how deeply he buries himself in this role. It brings to mind Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Penn in I Am Sam and, most particularly, Peter Sellers as the child-like gardener in Being There. But Dancy claims he didn’t set out to emulate those actors.

“If that thought had crossed my mind, I would have run in horror,” he says. “I’m not sure that people believe me when I say this, but it truthfully did not occur to me until after I’d made the movie that it might even be perceived in that way. I didn’t want to go out and do a lot of big acting and somehow revel in the glory of playing somebody with a different mental condition. That doesn’t interest me.”

For Byrne, meanwhile, the film was a chance to lighten up. The actress, who just celebrated her 30th birthday, has had a succession of sombre roles on the big screen (Knowing, 28 Weeks Later), as well as two seasons on the dark legal thriller Damages. When she read Mayer’s serio-comic script, she immediately agreed to do it.

“I had never been offered anything like it before,” she says. “[Beth] was an unconventional character in many ways. She embraces this guy who has this condition, but it happens in an organic way: they slowly become friends and then he woos her in a way — he shows her the stars and the raccoons — and then they sort of fall into this romance. Max really encouraged our performances and allowed us to explore the humour in the roles.”

VIDEO

Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy discuss their roles in Adam.

She found it quite a change from Damages, where her beleaguered Ellen is embroiled in a continuous cat-and-mouse game with Glenn Close’s devious super-lawyer, Patty Hewes. “Ellen’s sort of under siege the whole time and very stressed out, and has a lot of paranoia and fear.”

“Much easier for you to play, really,” Dancy teases her.

“She comes naturally,” Byrne agrees with a laugh. “Whereas playing Beth was somewhat liberating.”

Mayer hadn’t worked with either of his stars prior to this film. They turned out to be a dream team. “The two of them work so beautifully together in the movie,” he says. “Hugh is essentially a thinking person, he proceeds from his brain. And Rose, on the other hand, is extremely spontaneous and impulsive, which is exactly what I needed from Beth, to bring some light and air into this young man’s life.”

Mayer had no qualms about using a Brit and an Aussie to play native New Yorkers. Dancy and Byrne are part of that breed of global actors who switch accents and nationalities with ease. The Sydney-born Byrne got her start as a kid in Australian television and made her adult feature-film debut opposite the late Heath Ledger. Now, like Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe and other stars from Down Under, she spends much of her time portraying Americans.

Adam's creator, Max Mayer, left, is a veteran New York theatre director. Adam's creator, Max Mayer, left, is a veteran New York theatre director. (Scott Garfield/Fox Searchlight Pictures)

Why are Aussies so good at linguistic disguise? “I think it’s just a desperate attempt to get rid of their native accents,” Dancy jokes.

“Whateva!” replies Byrne, doing her best Steve Irwin impression. “We have a lot of American television, far more than England,” she continues seriously. “We get every American show. I don’t know if that influences us in terms of the sound.”

So far, Byrne has the edge on Dancy when it comes to acting stateside, but he’s catching up. The Staffordshire-born actor plays a New Yorker again in Coach, an upcoming comedy about a slacker who finds purpose guiding a kids’ soccer team. He’s not sure when it will be out. “I haven’t actually seen it yet. It was a similar scale to this one, very low budget,” he says. He also can’t put a date on a much bigger event in his life — his wedding to fiancée Claire Danes. “We’re still working on that,” he says with a smile. The two, who met as co-stars on the film Evening, have been engaged since February.

Byrne, meanwhile, is preparing to shoot the third season of Damages this fall. As she starts discussing last season’s developments, Dancy stops her, admitting he hasn’t seen it yet. “I’m spending the next month with Rose in person,” he explains to me, “so it would be a bit much if I went back to my room every night and watched Damages.”

“I don’t think it would!” Byrne says, laughing.

“All right,” he concedes cheerfully. “Let’s go through each other’s back catalogues, then.”

Adam opens in Toronto on Aug. 7.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.