BEN IS BACK
“Unfortunately, this story is lived out every hour of every day by a family, by a parent, by a child all over the world,” says Julia Roberts of Ben Is Back, in which she plays a mother trying to cope with the return of her drug-addicted son (Boy Erased’s Lucas Hedges). “I just feel like it’s that constant reevaluation of, what is the right thing to do right now for this person? Is it to love them and believe them and hold them close? Is it to not believe them? Is it to be hard on them?” Julia’s real-life children had questions as well. “My son Henry said to me, ‘Mom, why in movies when you play somebody’s mom, why is it always a boy?’” Julia recalls of her 11-year-old. “And I said, ‘Wow, I don’t know. You know what? We’re going to have Lucas come over and you guys are going to meet him.’” The young actor stayed with Julia and her family. “He got to know [my husband] Danny [Moder] and the kids really well before we started shooting,” Julia says. “I felt that it was important for my kids to know who I was going off with, pretending to be their mother.” [R]