"Life as We Know It" a lot like real life for co-stars

NEW YORK — Off screen, Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel are friends who seem to fall easily into the spiky, teasing repartee their characters engage in during their opposites-attract romantic comedy, "Life as We Know It."

On screen, they play singles who are set up on a blind date by mutual friends and quickly descend into a hatred-at-first-sight relationship.

Heigl's Holly Berenson is the prim, cultured owner of a boutique cafe-bakery. Duhamel's Eric Messer is a stubbly, sports-crazy, womanizing guy who wouldn't know a croissant from a crumpet. The only thing they have in common is a long friendship with Peter and Alison (Hayes MacArthur and Christina Hendricks), parents of baby Sophie, to whom Holly and Messer are godparents.

But when tragedy thrusts Holly and Messer together to care for Sophie, "Life as We Know It" receives a dramatic jolt that puts the comically battling co-stars on a path to reluctant domesticity and contentious romance.

At a news conference for the film's release, hosted by Warner Bros. at the Regency Hotel, Heigl and Duhamel were asked about their worst blind-date experiences, and they quickly took up a joking patter that mirrored Holly and Messer's verbal sparring.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Heigl: "I've never been fixed up."

Duhamel: "I've had plenty of awkward dating moments."

Heigl: "Yes, lots of those."

Duhamel: "But I've always been in relationships for a long time. Dating always scared the crap out of me. For this very reason (the movie's disastrous date). I just couldn't date."

Heigl: "So, how did you end up in those relationships?"

Duhamel: "Well, I had to make very sure that I wanted to go out with this person, and..."

Heigl: "So, you just stalked them for awhile?"

Duhamel: "Yes, I would do a complete recon, and uh..."

Heigl: "Do a background check?"

Duhamel: "Uh, yeah and make sure I wanted to be with this person before I got involved."

Heigl: "Hmm, that is so interesting and weird."

Duhamel: "Well, you know, when you meet someone and just know you're interested, but..."

Heigl: "So, you never just met someone in a bar and had a dinner date the next night and had a terrible time. That never happened to you?"

Duhamel: "Well, I'm sure it did. I just don't..."

Heigl: "Recall? Because you got so drunk you couldn't remember? Hmm. I had only one really bad one, and it was with a trainer when I was 18 and about 20 pounds heavier, trying real hard to work it off at the gym. My trainer asked me out, and he took me to Sizzler and gave me his head shot (photo) and asked if I could get him into my agency. So, I guess it wasn't those 20 extra pounds that turned him on."

Besides an aversion to blind-dating, working with infants on screen was another terror-fraught challenge for the actors. But Heigl, former star of TV's "Grey's Anatomy," and Duhamel, mainstay of the "Transformers" film franchise, said working with the infant actors on this film (baby Sophie was played by triplets Alexis, Brynn and Brooke Clagett and as toddlers by twins Brooke and Kiley Liddell), was a pleasure.

"Before we ever started shooting, the producers had me go to Atlanta a little bit early just to acclimate myself with the kids and get them to be comfortable with me," Duhamel said. "And that was huge for us in the movie, because they really responded to me. Katherine was in the middle of adopting her own child at the time so she couldn't come early.

"But I went out there and I got to know these kids really well before we ever started shooting, and it was helpful because we really didn't have to take them off the set all the time," he said. "They could stay there, and they could play and they could live on the set while we were shooting, and it made them feel comfortable. So that's part of the reason why those cute little triplets worked really well in the movie."

"But it could also be that all girls like you," Heigl piped in. "Even little boys — all children like Josh."

"I do have an affinity for kids and they like me," Duhamel joshed. "I think it's because we can understand each other on the same emotional level."

Heigl, who had adopted 9-month-old daughter Naleigh as filming began, said she learned parenting techniques on the job.

"It was the alpha mother thing. They need to know who's in charge," she joked. "No, thankfully, I had just gotten sort of familiar with holding and comforting of a child, so I could kind of do that mothering instinct thing a little bit. But it was still so new to me. There's a lot of just letting it go.

"So, we had to do a lot of breathing exercises and just stay calm and be patient and not take it personally. But Josh was fantastic with working hard and getting to know those babies, and I kinda had to do it cold. They did not like me as much. At least I had one in my trailer who did."

Heigl said the parallels between her lives on camera and off were startling.

"I was living on camera what I was living in my life," she said. "Down to just the tiniest little things, like the outfit that they'd put the triplets in for a scene that was just like the one my daughter had come to work in that day.

"I watched the film recently and sort of thought it's a living journal," she said. "It reminds me of those first few months with this 9-month-old baby that was so new to me and I was so new to her and all the little things that go along with that — what kind of diapers we used and what kind of wipes and what kind of pack-and-play. ... And it'll just forever remind me of that time, and it was really intense and glorious. And Holly was me, and I was her. I didn't have to act; I was her."

Duhamel, on the other hand, said he hopes he wins points for playing against his hunky image.

"If you look at the movie poster (with him walking around in his underwear), I think you'll agree it's not sexy," he said.

"In fact, if you look closely, it looks like they superimposed a 65-year-old man's legs on me. So, I need to do a little bit more exercising.

"We actually talked a lot about this," he said. "I didn't want to do a lot of shirtless things for gratuity. If I was going to do it, I wanted it to be funny. When (director Greg Berlanti) actually pitched this to me, he said, 'Look, I know you don't want to do a lot of shirtless stuff, but we're having the baby walk past in a diaper and her little pink Converse and her baby bottle, do you mind walking past in your high-tops, your underwear and a beer bottle?' I said, 'That's funny. I'll do it.' And here it is on the movie poster."