For Benjamin Hollingsworth, fatherhood has turned ordinary family moments into lessons about patience, perseverance and the fleeting nature of time.
“The days are long. They’re really, really long, but the years fly by,” the actor said in a Movieguide® interview.
Hollingsworth, known for playing Brady on the Netflix series VIRGIN RIVER, said his own father gave him a model for parenting through commitment, play, kindness and generosity. Becoming a dad himself only deepened his appreciation for the sacrifices and patience he had seen growing up.
“The most rewarding things in life are hard. They just are,” Hollingsworth said. He compared raising children to hiking up a mountain instead of taking a helicopter to the top: the view may be beautiful either way, but the effort changes how deeply a person appreciates it.
“They’re the hardest things and they’re the best things,” Hollingsworth said, adding that he knew fatherhood would be difficult but did not expect it to be so rewarding. Parenting asks for daily sacrifice, but it also gives families memories they could not receive any other way.
The actor also spoke honestly about the tension between his work and his family life. When he is away filming, he said, he cannot simply step off set to handle a school emergency or family responsibility, which makes his wife’s support especially important.
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When he returns home, Hollingsworth tries to be fully present instead of running lines or answering work emails. A hug from his children helps him leave the day’s pressures behind.
At the time of the interview, Hollingsworth said his sons had become enthusiastic baseball fans while watching the Toronto Blue Jays with him. The shared games brought back memories from his own childhood and showed him how parenting can reopen doors to experiences he might otherwise have forgotten.
That same sense of generational connection shapes the words he speaks to his children every night. His parents’ handwritten notes about believing in himself inspired the family mantra, and he tells his children that they are loved no matter what.
“Follow your heart, believe in yourself,” Hollingsworth said. He also tells his children that mistakes can teach them and that God’s love is eternal, hoping that steady assurance will help them make wise choices and keep their moral compass in place.
Hollingsworth discussed those ideas while promoting 2025’s KAREN KINGSBURY’S THE CHRISTMAS RING, in which he plays antiques dealer Ben Miller. Fathom Entertainment’s official synopsis describes the movie as the story of a military widow who meets a poetic antiques dealer while searching for her family’s long-lost heirloom ring. Jana Kramer, Kelsey Grammer, Jessie James Decker and Debbie Winans also star.
Fathom’s cast announcement said the movie opened in theaters nationwide on November 6, 2025, after the companion book’s October release. Deadline reported that Hollingsworth and Grammer joined Kramer in the adaptation, directed by Tyler Russell and produced by Natalie Ruffino Wilson.
For Hollingsworth, the movie’s appeal reaches beyond romance. He said the story includes family, tradition, belief in God, faith, rediscovering love and a sense of optimism, which he connected to the hope of Christmas. Movieguide® praised its “strong Christian worldview” and themes of “family, friendship, forgiveness and helping others, along with strong patriotic elements.”
He also hopes audiences will experience the movie together. Hollingsworth compared a theater gathering with the difference between praying alone at home and praying among other people, arguing that shared experiences can remind viewers they are part of something larger than themselves.
“I can make people feel included and make people feel like they’re not alone,” Hollingsworth said near the end of the conversation. That may be the clearest thread running through his comments about acting and fatherhood: the work matters most when it helps people cherish one another.
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