Jason Bateman:
What I’ve Learned

Jason Bateman has been famous for nearly 50 years and has transformed himself from a child star into a Golden Globe–winning actor, an Emmy-winning director, and one third of the incredibly popular podcast Smartless. (His latest projects, Black Rabbit and Zootopia 2, are out now.) With his wife of 24 years, Bateman has two daughters, one of whom just went off to college. How did he reach this point in his life and career, and what hard-earned lessons has he learned along the way? Here, in owns words, he explains it all. This interview took place on October 7 in Los Angeles, where Bateman lives.

I still feel like I’m trying to not be a child-actor failure. I’m still trying to make it out. Jason Bateman

When I was a kid, the three things I wanted to get done as an adult were to be a father, a husband, and direct a movie.

My mom was a flight attendant for Pan Am, so she was flying internationally half the month my whole childhood. Sometimes, Christmas would be on December 15 or the 2nd of January or whatever, depending on whether she was in town. We never really had Sunday dinners. My dad was a freelance writer, director, producer, so he would either be on location or maybe downstairs in the basement writing a script.

My sister and I had a peer relationship with our parents; they were our managers.

Starting at the age of ten, I was teaching myself how to be a professional liar. How to convince people that I was something other than what I was thinking inside.

My older daughter is just eating up everything about the college experience. The future’s so bright. I remember feeling that when I was eighteen too. I just thought there was no one better than me, and there are interviews that I’ve seen that prove that. I can’t stand watching them. It’s so gross.

An interview I did with Jane Pauley on Today in 1987 came up on my phone. I watched it for about ninety seconds, and I had to turn it off because I was such a douchebag. I mean, I had some affected voice, probably because I’m all banged up from the night before. But there’s also such self-satisfaction. I’m talking about how many things I turned down to do Teen Wolf Too, like, “Hey guy, no one’s buying that.”

My daughter is not anywhere near as gross as I was at the time. I just love seeing her blind confidence. You think it’s all just going to be unicorns and rainbows forever, and then she’ll be a little bit humbled by the practicalities of life and hopefully she’ll come and seek our counsel for that.