Boynton Beach actor Zack Gottsagen faces life with a contagious optimism, an undaunted confidence in himself, and in others, that inspires people to accomplish things they may think impossible, even while they are doing it.

It is all the more remarkable for someone who has spent much of his life hearing the word “no.”

He would never talk or walk, doctors said. He would not be in the school play, his high school said. A feature film starring someone with Down syndrome would never get financing, said two young filmmakers who then spent five years making sure it got finished, living in a tent for much of that time.

Audiences across the country soon will be introduced to Gottsagen in “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” a bittersweet buddy comedy whose release in more than 500 theaters on Aug. 23 is as improbable as the standing ovations that film-festival audiences have given its star, an unknown 34-year-old actor with Down syndrome who willed the story, from a script no one in Hollywood wanted to read, onto the screen.

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