There is one memorable scene in "Mother and Child" in which Kerry Washington plays a single mother who has just adopted a baby and gets lost in wide-eyed baby panic. She wants you to know she was acting.
Washington assures PopcornBiz she's more than comfortable with kids. After all she has had training in every movie she's done.
"In movies I have always played a character who was pregnant, a mother or both or someone who just lost a baby," she laughs. She points to her break-out part as a teen-mother in "Save the Last Dance" to playing Ray Charles' mother in "Ray."
While the actress is single and admits to having only a dog, this is the first time she had to play a rookie mother. "It was interesting to explore what it would be like if I wasn't comfortable with children because I really am."
In fact, she rolls through her IMDB resume to come up with one movie where she wasn't some form of a mother. "I think 'Fantastic Four' is the only one I have ever done where pregnancy is not a big part of it."
Of course, given that she plays the blind love interest to The Thing in these movies, any offspring of that union could only be loved by its mother.