TORONTO - When Reg Harkema decided his next film would be a campy melodrama about a hippie death cult, he expected some resistance.

It was obvious that getting investors to embrace the lurid subject matter of "Leslie, My Name Is Evil," would be a potential problem, but casting the Charles Manson-inspired tale proved to be another hurdle.

Harkema wanted a Canadian cast of little-known actors; his funding partners pushed for big-named leads, including U.S. stars.

"When you step up to the budget levels that I was stepping up to on this film, there's a certain expectation to try to get name cast and stars," says Harkema, a Toronto-based editor-turned-director whose films include the 2006 festival hit, "Monkey Warfare."

"And the local Canadian actors were way better than any of the stars. I kept praying for the stars to turn down the parts and eventually they did and I basically got the cast I wanted."

It goes without saying that a little star power goes a long way towards pulling in an audience.

And in the Canadian film industry -- where anglophone audiences are notoriously ambivalent about homegrown fare -- the battle for bums-in-seats has become especially tough.

Earlier this year, Telefilm chief Michel Roy called for relaxed federal restrictions on foreign stars in publicly funded movies. He said hiring more U.S. stars would particularly boost the box office take of English-Canadian films, which accounted for just one per cent of receipts last year.

Current tax rules require the lead or second lead actor to be Canadian. Actress and director Sarah Polley says they're already "pretty lax restrictions."

"I guess if you made them more loose you would cast no Canadians," says Polley, whose directorial debut "Away From Her" paired Canadian acting veteran Gordon Pinsent with British legend Julie Christie.

"Which is fine, I'm just not sure you should have public money for that."

Polley, whose next film, "Take This Waltz" is stacked with U.S. stars Michelle Williams and Sarah Silverman in addition to Vancouver's Seth Rogen, says "it couldn't be easier" to hire foreign talent.

"There doesn't seem to be a huge obstacle, in fact I would say it's more problematic how easy it actually is," says Polley, adding that she simply seeks out the best actor for the job when helming her own films.

"If there's public money for these things, I don't think it should just generally be to create vehicles for American stars. I think it's really important that we're also nurturing our own actors and talent."

And while there appears to be more pressure to hire U.S. stars, Polley suggests that's largely due to the current economic climate.

She notes that a bigger-budget film would especially find itself held to strict account. Double that for a co-production such as the upcoming sci-fi horror, "Splice." The Canada-France co-production stars Polley as a rogue geneticist opposite U.S. star Adrien Brody.

"I'm sure the fact that (Brody) has a box office name doesn't hurt because the truth is you're spending $20 to $30 million on a movie, and it's not all coming from Telefilm -- it's also coming from overseas," she notes.

"You're going to need someone like (Brody). That's the reality of the market. But he's also just the right person for the part."

Kari Skogland, who put U.K. stars Ben Kingsley and Jim Sturgess alongside Canadian Kevin Zegers in her IRA thriller "50 Dead Men Walking," welcomed Roy's comments as a step in the right direction.

"There's no question that has to happen if we want to make the goal of internationally sellable pictures," said Skogland, whose next projects include a historical epic about William the Conquerer, also known as William the Bastard.

"Right now the formula is a little bit... it's a bit handcuffing for some of the bigger pictures. And so Canada doesn't benefit. The very actors we're trying to help don't necessarily get the help with that particular paradigm. I think it worked for a long time but now it just needs to be restructured a little bit."

"This is why co-productions work really well. 'William the Bastard,' for instance, is a U.K.-Canadian co-production, and so something like that we can cast a little bit differently, we can bring in U.K. names."

The push for a big name to anchor "Leslie, My Name Is Evil," sent Harkema chasing after Canadian stars Scott Speedman and Barry Pepper and U.S. star Skeet Ulrich.

The part of "Charlie" eventually landed with Vancouver actor Ryan Robbins. He says he's grateful for the role, but notes it came with less advance notice than he's used to.

"I don't really know how it happened but by the time I got the call, it was like, 'Oh and by the way, you'll be on a plane in like, a week,' " Robbins recalls.

"I didn't have a lot of time to prepare, I had joined the cast so late. I think I had a week or a week-and-a-half to cram."

Harkema says that's one of the pitfalls of dealing with higher profile actors.

"You make offers to these stars and they kind of dilly dally, or their managers dilly dally and they wait to tell you whether they're going to take the role or not because they don't want your movie to take off and be seen as like, 'Oh, my manager turned down the next 'Juno'," he says.

"So they just don't give you an answer. And after about three weeks, you go, 'OK, I've got to withdraw the offer."'

Director Peter Stebbings, who cast U.S. star Woody Harrelson in the title role of his Hamilton-set super-hero tale, "Defendor," also found that nailing down a star can be fraught with complications.

"Rarely do you end up with the person you first imagined," says Stebbings.

"In my mind's eye I originally wrote the script for Philip Seymour Hoffman and then when you're dealing with distributors and they're offering money to make the film, you supply them a list and they kind of counter with their own list. And from those two lists you kind of come up with 10 or so actors that you could envision in the role. Woody Harrelson's name was on that list."

The scramble for a bigger name makes it all the harder for struggling Canadian actors, says Kristen Hager, a 2005 theatre school graduate who nevertheless nabbed the role of Leslie in Harkema's film, out Friday.

Hager got the part after Jena Malone of "Donnie Darko" and "Twilight" star Kristen Stewart turned it down, says Harkema.

"I'd say 90 per cent of the jobs I'm up for I don't get because they want a name," says Hager, whose credits include the finale episode of "CSI: Miami," airing May 24.

"I would say now is a more difficult time than ever to get work."

Harkema says the push for more U.S. stars in Canadian film is a "pragmatic" approach for those pursuing commercial cinema. But it's not his.

"I live in an alternate universe in which particular critical reception (usually Cinema Scope writers) of a particular subject matter is what drives me to see a film," he says in a follow-up email.

"I'm dying to see (Romanian art-house hit) 'Police, Adjective,' for example. I would like to see a national cinema in which we disregard the star system and we all make the best movies we can make. But again, I live in an alternate universe."