ollywood has long had a thing for big families. The 1968 movie Yours, Mine and Ours saw Henry Fonda, a widowed father of 10, marry Lucille Ball, a widowed mother of eight. A year later The Brady Bunch debuted on TV, several years before Eight is Enough introduced us to the bustling Bradford family. Since then, screen families have been more conventionally sized, but now, along come
Tom and Kate Baker (Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt) and their 12 children in Cheaper By the Dozen.

  This new movie is itself a very loose remake of the 1950 movie of the same name starring Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, which was based on the true story of the Gilbreth family, headed by Frank Gilbreth Sr., an efficiency expert and a
pioneer in the field of motion study who often used his family as guinea pigs.

  In the new Cheaper By the Dozen, Martin plays Tom Baker, a coach of a college football team in small town Illinois. When he is offered his dream job - coaching a squad at a large university - the family is uprooted, much to the displeasure of all 12 children. When his wife has to go to New York on business, Tom is left alone to deal with the children's pent-up aggression.
actors
Steve Martin
Bonnie Hunt
Hilary Duff
Tom Welling
Piper Perabo

director
Shawn Levy

locations
Los Angeles

outtake
The Baker household has several fertility symbols placed throughout it, including stalks of wheat in the mouldings and a little woman carved into the area above a doorway.


  Director Shawn Levy (Big Fat Liar) feels the movie has more depth than its slapstick first impression would have you believe. "Cheaper By the Dozen is about family, loyalty and priorities," he says, crediting Steve Martin for contributions to the movie's richness.

  "When you have Steve Martin, you get layers of character and comedy that go well beyond the scripted page," Levy says. "Steve brings Tom Baker to life through his physical and verbal humor. His work starts where the words end."

  Martin, making his first starring role since the massive box office success of Bringing Down the House, appreciated the opportunity to be both funny
and emotional in Cheaper By the Dozen. "The script had a new-fangled approach to family that we don't see much in films today," he says.

  Martin and Hunt are not the only household names portraying Bakers. Playing the eldest son, Charlie, and making his big screen debut, is Tom Welling, star of TV's Smallville. Multi-format sensation, Hilary Duff, plays the stylish Lorraine, while Coyote Ugly's Piper Perabo plays her older sister, Nora. There are nine other young actors playing their siblings, many who have never been on a movie set before, and that lent a frenetic energy to the proceedings.

  "There's a madness and level of anarchy that happens between kids who are having fun without the fear of failure, and that creates a great environment," says Welling. "When you have 12 kids who are playing brothers and sisters, there's a lot of energy that reflects that of a real family. This is a family that has a good time being around each other, and I hope that comes through to the audiences."

- Dimetre Alexiou