Bridget Moynahan a star in public with a private life

Ouch, that had to hurt. (Moynahan gave birth to her and Brady’s son, John Edward Thomas Moynahan, in August of 2007.) But in her interviews Moynahan stays above the fray.

“No matter what’s been thrown at me in the past couple of years, I try to find the positive,” she tells us at the film’s press conference (she’s not taking individual interviews, we’ve been told).

“It’s easy to bitch and to listen to your people bitch, so if someone going through a divorce asks me for advice, I say, ‘All the he said/she said stuff doesn't matter. And your kid will pick up on that energy. Keep your kids the focus.’”

Fair enough. You don’t have to be psychic to gather that being alone and pregnant while your boyfriend’s cavorting with a supermodel must have sucked.

But we’re here to talk about her new film, Ramona and Beezus in which Moynahan plays a strong, independent mother, the kind of role model any young girl would be lucky to have.

Based on the 30 million and counting bestselling books by Beverly Cleary, the new film follows a young girl (a superb Disney queen Selena Gomez) who has to deal with the increasingly exasperating antics of her imaginative younger sister, Ramona Quimby (played by livewire Joey King).

Was her own Irish American background a factor in approaching the role? Was that what enticed her to play the part?

“I like the family values in the script. I thought they were very relatable. And I knew the books they were based on, I’d read them myself growing up,” Moynahan says.

Wait, is a Hollywood actress talking about family values? Is a meteorite due to hit? Is the end nigh?

Or is Moynahan just avoiding every opportunity to open up and talk about her personal life, no matter what the context? It seems that that the last impression is the right one, because for all 45 minutes of this yawn-inducing discussion we learn very little about her.

Born in Binghamton, New York, the daughter of Irish American parents Mary Bridget (a former school teacher) and Edward Bradley Moynahan  (a scientist and former administrator at the University of Massachusetts) Moynahan had a classic Irish American upbringing, family centered and reassuringly stable, and from day one she excelled.

When she was seven, her parents moved to Longmeadow, Massachusetts where she and her brother Andy and Sean attended Longmeadow High School. She was a bit of a jock between classes, captaining the girls’ soccer, basketball and lacrosse teams. Friends predicted great things for her.

Striking to look at and uncommonly tall, she was encouraged by her pals to pursue a career in modeling, although she admits she had no interest in fashion as a teen.

But she took the plunge and headed down to New York City, where by the age of 19 she was appearing in magazines like Vogue and Elle.

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Nster.com