(Cover) - EN Showbiz - Michael Sheen says deciding how much to draw on personal emotions in movies is a "fundamental problem".

The 42-year-old actor is currently promoting drama Beautiful Boy, which tells the story of a married couple who discover their 18-year-old son has committed a mass college shooting and also taken his own life.

The star plays husband Bill in the picture, with Maria Bello portraying wife Kate, and Michael has expressed the anguish he felt when preparing for the part.

"That's a good question, yeah. It's a good question because it goes to the kind of heart of a fundamental problem for actors and acting is that if you draw on your own experiences, certainly when it comes to being a parent, if you get, if you kind of go, Right, in this scene I'm gonna deal with my child dying or my child doing this or that or whatever,' and you go, Well I have a child and I have to imagine my child doing that,' the danger is that you get to the end of the day and that's not working anymore," he explained when asked if he drew on his own feelings.

Michael is currently dating Canadian actress Rachel McAdams, and has a 12-year-old daughter Lily Mo Sheen with former partner Kate Beckinsale. He explained how "tricky" it is if the lines between real-life and cinema get blurred.

"I'm thinking about the death of my own child and that's not really doing it because I've gotten too used to thinking about it. There's a cost to that as a person, to go, I've been imagining the death of my own child, and that's not really where you want to go into.

"At the same time, you've got to kind of, you've got to deal with it because otherwise it's just acting, and then it's sort of meaningless. So it's a tricky area that I think it factors into. We talked about that when we were doing it," he told Cinema Blend. (C) Cover Media