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Zach Braff at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival.Deborah Baic/The Globe and Mail

Zach Braff is on a garden terrace, the sun casting playful shadows on the flora around him, explaining how grateful he is that his new movie, The High Cost of Living, couldn't afford to put him up in a five-star hotel.

"The movie can't swing a room at the Four Seasons," explains Braff, who, instead of sitting in a sterile hotel suite like most celebrities who come to Toronto (where his film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall), is ensconced in a condo rented for a few scant hours.

But then, even a basic condo has a lot going for it compared to the cold comforts of Montreal in the dead of winter, where Braff made the film he's now talking about. "I know I sound like a baby, but it was freezing cold," said the 36-year-old New Jersey native. "But when I read Deborah Chow's script, I said to my agent, 'I want to meet this woman. I think she's a real talent.' "

In late 2009, Braff and Chow, a Canadian filmmaker, hooked up in New York. "I was checking her out. She was checking me out," he said. "I wanted to see, first and foremost, what her vibe was like. And I just liked her. She was very peaceful and Zen. I also wanted to let her know, because I had made a film myself [2004's sleeper hit Garden State] that I wasn't the kind of actor who was going to get in her way. I wanted a collaborative relationship, but I wanted to dissuade any fear she had that I might try and commandeer her movie in any way."

The High Cost of Living - which won best Canadian first feature at TIFF, and opened in theatres on Friday - is the story of American Henry Welles. A two-bit drug dealer living in Montreal, he hits a pregnant woman, Natalie (Quebec's Isabelle Blais), while driving drunk. She survives, but her unborn child does not, and she is increasingly estranged from her husband. In a weird twist, Henry befriends the grief-stricken Nathalie, leaving him a choice: come clean or live a lie.

"I'm very interested in people that aren't bad people but get themselves in horrible situations," said Braff. "We can all relate to getting ourselves tied in knots, or painted into a corner, until we finally say, 'Oh my God, if I could just rewind to two days ago, or take the last five minutes back.'

"Deborah's script is almost on a Greek-tragedy level, but Henry is not a bad guy. He's just tangled himself in so many knots that he literally has to hit rock bottom before he's able to begin the next chapter of his life."

Serious drama is a new outlet for Braff, best known for his comedic role on the hit TV show Scrubs, and for films such as The Last Kiss (a romantic comedy - also shot in Montreal, but in the spring) and the coming-of-age story Garden State. For the past few years, though, the actor has been trying to distance himself from comedy, "a place I'm very comfortable with because I've been doing it a long time," to take on new challenges.

"When I read The High Cost of Living, my immediate reaction was: 'Can I do that? Do I know how to do that? Am I up to this?' And all of that was exciting for me, and it was one of the reasons I jumped on board."

He's grateful to have reached a point in his career where he can afford to be picky about the roles he chooses; Garden State, shot in 25 days with a budget of $2.5-million (U.S.), had a box-office haul of $35-million. And he likes to have a diversified workload, which currently includes playwriting (his play, All New People, will run in New York this summer) and acting in a big studio feature, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a drama with Jessica Biel and Chloe Moretz.

"I've been lucky to be put in a position where I don't have to do stuff I don't believe in. … Garden State was based on my own experience: feeling super lost out of college, going, 'What now? Do I just get on the conveyor belt?' Maybe my next feature will be looking at my life, and that of my friends, at 35, and saying, 'Okay, we're here. Now is this where we want to be?' "

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