Leslie Mann says film helped her deal with the pain of her daughter leaving home

Actress Leslie Mann has said her latest comedy helped her deal with the sadness she felt about her teenage daughter leaving home for university.

The Hollywood star, best known for her roles in This Is 40 and Knocked Up, has two children with writer and director Judd Apatow and said it was painful when their eldest, Maude, 20, moved away.

She will next be seen in Blockers, playing a mother desperate to stop her daughter from losing her virginity on prom night and coming to terms with the fact she will soon be leaving home to go to university.

Mann told the Press Association: “It’s exactly what I’m going through right now in my life and so it was fun for me to do it and tell my part of the story.

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“It was important to me that it was honest and that it felt right for parents like me, who are going through the same thing, and I think we pulled it off.”

“I think it’s truthful to that story and it’s also really fun and I think parents watching it will be able to laugh at how much I’m suffering.”

She added: “It is hard for parents to be on that train and you don’t want to imagine those things happening necessarily, even though you know they are going to.

“You know your children are smart enough hopefully to make the right decisions and that you’ve raised them well enough to be independent thinkers and independent women but still you want to put it off as long as you can.”

Mann made the film shortly after Maude started college and she said: “It was kind of nice at the end of the movie that we were doing some voiceover stuff and it was the last thing  and I was like ‘OK I feel I can close that chapter’.

“Working on this movie helped me get over my pain that my daughter was leaving me and going to college.”

Blockers is out in UK cinemas now.