'Paint' star Owen Wilson recommends using crayons to find calm

After playing a paint instructor in his new film Paint, actor Owen Wilson reflects on finding his own sense of calm with ‘Crayolas’.

“When my boys were little, at restaurants I’d give them crayons and try to calm them down, but I think that maybe adults should be doing that, too,” Wilson told Variety .

”I don’t know why we ever stop doing that, because there is something really nice about trying to create something.”

“I guess there’s that Picasso quote: ‘I want to spend the rest of my life learning to paint like a child,’” he mused.

“Not worrying about anything and just expressing yourself — that feels good.”

The film follows Carl Nargle, a painter on TV who is going through a rough time after a younger rival steals the spotlight from him.

“Hopefully what people will appreciate and enjoy is the same thing that I did when I first read the script, and that was just how funny it is, and the idea of somebody who has not felt the need to change with the times, because everything’s going so perfect in his life,” Wilson explained.

“We can all sort of get comfortable and complacent if things are going your way, and then all of a sudden, when things aren’t, that can be an upsetting thing. And so the way that [Carl] deals with that and processes that is funny, but it’s also kind of moving.”

Owen Cunningham Wilson has had a long association with filmmaker Wes Anderson with whom he shared writing and acting credits for Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, the last of which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award and BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay.