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Jeff Daniels Stars in New Movie

Jeff Daniels, famous Hollywood actor, stars in a new movie, `The Squid and the Whale`. This film is based on the novel by Noah Baumbach and Daniels` character, Bernard, her real-life father. The storyline of the movie shows a family in the throws of separation. There were many surprises along the way regarding the actual filming of the movie, especially the wardrobe Daniels had to wear.

The reason for the wardrobe was Daniels` character. `Squid` tells the tale of a Brooklyn family very similar to Baumbach`s own going through a messy separation. The parents, played by Daniels and Laura Linney, end up with joint custody of their 16-year-old son played by Jessie Eisenberg (clearly standing in for Baumbach) and their 12-year-old son played by Owen Kline (son of Kevin Kline). Inevitably, both side with a different parent. The result is one of the more realistic and humorous takes regarding divorce brought to the screen. Unfortunately, many may misinterpret Bernard as the villain in the story, but not Daniels.

`I just figured there was no money,` Daniels says. `We needed clothes from the `80s and his dad was still wearing clothes that he`d bought in the early `80s and there was a closet in Brooklyn full of them. And we were close to the same size. You want to be somebody else when you play a character and this helped me become someone else.` `What stood out to me is that Bernard is oblivious to how he is,` Daniels says. `He doesn`t apologize. He`s the victim. He did everything he could possibly do. It`s not his fault. He didn`t cheat. We`d all be together if it was up to him.`

Having to deal with his wife`s promising writing career only exacerbates Bernard`s own frustration at having his own once successful literary career come to a grinding halt. And in some ways, Daniels could relate. `The solitariness ... I understand that. That I was able to personalize,` he says. `Friends of mine who have won awards or made $20 million a movie ... well, I haven`t. There was an under-appreciation factor that Bernard was going through as a novelist that I thought, `If we`re here to use ourselves, let`s use myself that way.` And I just took that and threw it in front of the lens.`