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Garner, Carell use their parenting skills in film

The Columbian
Published: October 11, 2014, 5:00pm

LOS ANGELES — It was easy for Jennifer Garner and Steve Carell to slip into their roles in the new family comedy “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.”

“We are both parents,” Garner says. “Not together, but apart.”

“And we’re the BEST parents,” Carell adds.

They definitely needed all of their parenting skills to play the mom and dad to a young boy who makes a birthday wish that his family has a bad day. And, by bad day, that means wrecking the family car, destroying a high school play production, making Dick Van Dyke mad and ruining a prom date.

The production — based on the best-selling children’s book of the same name — shows how family support helps with the worst of days. This is where Garner and Carell counted on their own life experiences: Garner has three children and Carell has two.

“We would pipe up and make our thoughts known,” Garner says.

“If anything rang false to us, we would speak up,” Carell adds. “More often than not, things felt like they would feel in our houses.”

Garner calls playing a parent a continuing process — something that’s not that different from being a real parent.

“Have I cracked what it is to be a great mom? No. But that’s the great thing about being a parent. Every day is a fresh start where you can always say, ‘Today, let’s try this.’ If it goes horribly, then you can go, ‘Today, we’re throwing that out.’ That’s part of what I like about being a mom in general,” Garner says.

Being cast as a mom is rather new for Garner, whose career is filled with action and romantic comedy roles. Some actors might be upset by going from the femme fatale to the mundane mom, but she embraces the casting.

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