Aaron Eckhart pretended his child died, attended support group for movie role

Jan. 23 (UPI) -- In 2010's Rabbit Hole, Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman played a couple struggling to come to terms with the death of their young son. Eckhart, who also played Harvey Dent in Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, went seriously method to prepare for the film.

During his appearance on The Howard Stern Show Monday, the 45-year-old actor said he visited a support group and pretended that his fake child had died.

"It's rude," Eckhart said. "It's very sensitive to go in there, of course it is. I did the research. The gathering is very quiet. There's 10 people, couples. [Their children had passed away] very recently, it's fresh. You're sitting in sort of a circle. Then one person goes, then two, three, then it gets to me. And by that point you're just so flushed that you just start going and giving the details of the story."

"Oh yeah, 100 percent, I lost it," he added. "You really believe that you just lost a child. You are as close to reality in that sense as possible. I don't want to be rude to people who have lost a child, but yeah, you feel right there, you feel like your character."

Eckhart is out promoting his film, I, Frankenstein, in which he plays Frankenstein's famous creature creation. Though he didn't attend a support group for misunderstood monsters, Eckhart told Screen Rant that he did do his research.

Well I think I went to the animal world for that; I studied the gorilla, I studied how he acts and how he moves and his movements. I thought that was a good place to start, an animal that had an abundance of strength, strikes quickly, but yet in his interior he’s basically a sensitive creature. All his physicality I got from the gorilla.

[Us Weekly]