Films that stars watch to cheer up

Even celebrities have their off days. A few of the stars from this season’s films talk about the movies that pick them up when life gets them down

The movies which make me happiest are the ones I watched when I was a kid over and over on video. When my mom first bought a VHS machine, she bought two videos, and we only had those two videos for a really long time. Like years. Luckily, those two videos were Harold and Maude and the Lou Gossett Jr Boot Camp Workout video... When I wasn’t working out to that, I was watching Harold and Maude [about a suicidal young man and an elderly woman who is an optimist] over and over again... It was the first movie I watched which felt like my sense of humour.” — Leslie Mann

The thing that makes me happy is getting home and watching

The Lion King with my kids. I love that movie. That was the first movie they’d ever seen. I have fond memories of taking them to the theatres. It’s just something that holds a lot of weight for me, that’s very close to my kids. They play the games and re-enact all the things in the movie. My son will be 10 this Christmas, and my daughter is 11. And my son is just obsessed with it. He gets to be Simba and Nala, and I’m Mufasa. Singing Hakuna Matata and being Pumbaa and doing fart jokes — that’s what makes it fun.” — Jason Momoa

Defending Your Life [in which an advertising executive played by Albert Brooks dies and discovers in the afterlife that he has to prove he has conquered his fears or get sent back to Earth for a do-over]. I always cry at the end. Happy tears.” — Sarah Silverman

“A film I always come back to that I’ve adored for years is Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. I love the atmosphere Coppola creates, the melancholy of the two lead characters [lonely hearts in a Tokyo hotel, played by Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson] and their feelings of connection in a world that they feel so disconnected from. And it’s beautifully shot. A real pleasure to watch.” — Felicity Jones

If it’s going tobea pick-me-up, it’s probably going to have to be comedy, and for me it’s tied between Step

Brothers or Year One. Those movies have unlimited quotables as far as lines that I thought were hilarious. And I tend to use them in everyday life. One from Step Brothers would be when Will Ferrell’s character says, ‘Did we just become best friends?’ And John C Reilly’s character is like, ‘Yep!’...

In Year One, when Jack Black’s character [bites into a shiny gold apple from the Tree of Knowledge] and Michael Cera’s character is telling him not to eat it [but asking], ‘How does it taste?’ And Jack Black is like: ‘I don’t know. It kind of has sort of a knowledge-y taste.’ And Michael Cera says: ‘Oh, is that right? Does it have a forbidden taste as well? Because that’s what it is — forbidden.’” — Jovan Adepo — New York Times News Service Photos by Rex Features