JOHN CUSACK SHOWS KNACK FOR PARENTING

John Cusack who plays a single father who adopts a young boy in Martian Child is sensitive to parenting.

Everybody around John Cusack wants him to be a father including his sister Joan who albeit is a harried mother herself, and new mom Amanda Peet who co-stars with John in Martian Child.

John is not any closer to becoming a dad, but playing one to young actor Bobby Coleman in the film and observing friends with kids has given him a profound respect for the selflessness of being a parent.

“It represented the heroic nature of parents. We all talk about the heroism of doing all these different things and our ambitions. I have not been a father myself but seeing my family and thinking back to my past, my father or my friends who have kids, some of them have kids with special needs, then it’s just endlessly selfless and you have to put so much energy into doing it well. It’s very heroic so it’s about the heroism of the every day, about parents who devote their lives to making it better for kids.”

In the film we’re not quite sure if the kid John’s single father adopts is really from Mars or just behaving that way because he doesn’t fit in. John says it’s a delicate balance to nurture a child’s uniqueness.

“There’s an inherent dilemma in being a parent because the film touches on this, you want to socialize the kid, you want him to fit in. You want him to be normal and you want him to go out and enter into the world but not at any cost because do you want to make the kid like everybody else so that he fits in. Or people who are unique and a little bit special sometimes they don’t fit in and sometimes the world doesn’t embrace them but you have to embrace that part of him.”

For his next film John explores fatherhood once again in Grace is Gone, playing a family man who takes his daughters on a healing road trip when his wife dies in the war in Iraq.