Joshua Jackson has learned from playing dads

Joshua Jackson wants to be the “opposite” of the fathers he’s played on TV.

The 42-year-old actor and his wife Jodie Turner-Smith welcomed daughter Janie into the world in April, and though Joshua has played a dad on screen a number of times, the biggest lesson he’s learned from the roles is not to parent the way they did.

He said: “It’s funny … I haven’t played any particularly functioning dads. I guess I have learned to be the abstract opposite of the fathers I’ve played on TV.

“Cole in ‘The Affair’ was not a good father figure and my character in ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ is a product of his time, so he’s not the best father.

“He doesn’t have the tools to be what we would consider a functioning father or to be emotionally engaged with his children. He thinks his job is to go out and make the money.”

The former ‘Dawson’s Creek’ actor believes there is often a “generational shift” over the role of being a father and the expectations that come with it.

He mused in an interview: “When it comes to fatherhood, I feel like there’s a generational shift through every generation. With the generation of men who came before me, there was a very specific role of what a man should be.

“When that role ended, I don’t think men knew what to do with themselves. I think they found themselves cast adrift. We threw out the old order, but we didn’t know what to put in its place.”