Ryan Phillippe tells ET fatherhood came naturally, “Being a father is by far my greatest achievement and the most important thing about me. My mother had a day-care center in my house growing up and I come from a big family on the East Coast. We grew up helping take care of and raise kids, so it’s second nature to me.”

After his split from actress Reese Witherspoon, Phillippe says he faced unusual parenting challenges, such as trying to explain to his kids who the paparazzi are, “You try to make it seem as commonplace as you can. That’s sort of the approach you have to take with all of that stuff, with the press, with the paparazzi. You kinda just say, ‘Well, you know, Mommy and Daddy do this certain kind of job and it creates an interest in the public,’ and you minimize all of that stuff as much as you can.”

Phillippe goes on to say that he can relate to the character he plays in his new film because he nearly enlisted to be a soldier himself, “Out of high school, I didn’t have a ton of options because my grades weren’t the best and I didn’t come from money,” he says. “When I graduated, it was around the time of the first Gulf War and I did go and sit in a recruitment office and got the T-shirt and everything. The guy who went in with me ended up going over and serving in the first Gulf War, but I went to New York to be an actor instead.”

ET Online