Zach Braff scuffs up his nice-guy image

updated 6:21 p.m. ET Sept. 18, 2006

TORONTO - Zach Braff is the adorable puppy dog on "Scrubs," the NBC sitcom in which he plays a goofy, ever-lovesick young doctor just about anyone might want to hug.

Now Braff's happy to play a young architect so in lust that even his own mother might want to punch him out.

In "The Last Kiss," Braff stars as a man whose unease over settling down with his beautiful, pregnant girlfriend leads him into a fling with an enticing college babe.

"I have reporters all the time saying to me, `I really love the movie. I wanted to slap ... you,'" Braff told The Associated Press at the Toronto International Film Festival, where "The Last Kiss" premiered in advance of its theatrical debut Friday. "I say, `That's great, that's awesome. You had a reaction to it.'"

Adapted from an Italian film, "The Last Kiss" makes a few concessions to American audiences. The lead player in the Italian version is a bit more of a cad, Braff said, but the remake generally retains the character's ambiguous nature as someone to love and hate at the same time.

"I think it's sort of refreshing to have a protagonist that isn't always doing all the right things, and the only bad things that happen to him are a result of negative outside forces as opposed to something internal," Braff said.

"It just felt very human, and I couldn't believe the studio was going to make the movie. I got them to promise me they weren't going to change it when I signed on. You can see all the opportunities where they could have wimped out and softened it and made it more mainstream. There'll be people who'll have a hard time with this movie."

Slide show   Ready, set … Toronto Stars and fans come out for the city's International Film Festival.

After writing, directing and starring in the hit "Garden State" and scoring with the lead voice in the animated comedy "Chicken Little," Braff is looking to maintain a career as one of those rare stars able to jump from the small screen to the big one.

Braff, 31, co-stars with Jason Bateman and Amanda Peet in next year's workplace comedy "Fast Track," and "Scrubs" creator Bill Lawrence is working on a movie adaptation of author Gregory McDonald's crime romp "Fletch Won" in which Braff may star. The actor also plans to return to directing with a remake of the sober Danish drama "Open Hearts," a story of tragic twists that follow a traffic accident.

Back to ‘Scrubs’?
Meantime, Braff remains busy on "Scrubs," the show that broke open his career, which had a promising start with the 1993 Woody Allen comedy "Manhattan Murder Mystery" but had languished with little-seen indie films through the rest of the 1990s.

Braff has not decided whether to return to "Scrubs," saying he will put the decision off until March when production wraps on the sixth season.

Another decision he faces is whether to appear in his version of "Open Hearts" or stick solely to writing and directing the film, which is based on Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's tale.

Foreign-language flicks are a handy source of material for filmmakers too busy to develop a story from scratch, Braff said.

"I don't really believe in remaking American movies. I think that's sort of silly. There's something about an American audience, the masses don't tend to watch subtitled foreign films in this country, so I think they are a great source for adaptations," Braff said.

"It's nice for me when I can't write an original screenplay, because they're a hard thing to do and you don't always have the time to dedicate to it. So where can you go? You can go to a book, obviously, or you can find a great foreign film nobody in this country saw. With `Open Hearts," I was so taken by it, this story really resonated with me. I bet it would resonate with a lot of people."

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