Eli Roth laments how hard it is for actors to actually see movies during TIFF

TORONTO – By the time most celebrities are done striding down red carpets, posing at parties and chatting up press at the Toronto International Film Festival, there isn’t much time left for, well, actual movies — and horror buff Eli Roth can’t stand it.

“All I want to do in my free time is see movies,” Roth said in an interview on Tuesday.

“It’s such a tease. It’s torture, actually, to know that these movies are playing in theatres and you can’t go see them.”

The 40-year-old multi-hyphenate actor, director, producer and writer — who directed the “Hostel” horror films and starred in Quentin Tarantino’s Second World War epic “Inglourious Basterds” — is in town primarily to promote his new film, “Aftershock.”

Directed by Nicolas Lopez, the gory, grisly disaster flick follows six middle-class Americans — including Roth, who also co-wrote the film — partying it up through Chile before a devastating earthquake tears through their city, initiating a terrifying chaos exacerbated by rampaging criminals sprung from the local jail.

Though he’s had a full publicity plate, Roth has filled pretty much every spare moment with screenings.

He rushed out to an early-morning showing of Harmony Korine’s edgy “Spring Breakers” then dashed off to a screening of the Snoop Lion-focused documentary “Reincarnated.” He also found time to squeeze in Paul Thomas Anderson’s buzzed-about drama “The Master” and Brian De Palma’s erotic thriller “Passion.”

But he was still left wanting more.

“I’m on this weird festival high where you don’t know what day it is, you don’t know what time it is,” Roth said with a laugh, seated next to a nodding Lopez.

“It kills me that there’s these movies that I want to see — and I can see them in this beautiful theatre on this big screen — (but) I can’t see them. It’s torturing me, actually.”