Will Ferrell thinks fatherhood is like ”running a prison.”
The 47-year-old actor believes raising Axel, five, Mattias, eight, and Magnus, 11, with whom he has with wife Viveca Paulin, is similar to being in charge of a correctional facility for criminals.
Speaking to PEOPLE.com at the SXSW premiere of his new movie Get Hard, he said: ”I can only imagine, but I sometimes equate it to what it must be like running a prison. What happens with three boys is you end up barking out orders like, ‘Upstairs now!’ ‘Brush teeth!’ ‘Lights out!’ There is so much chaos you can’t really take the time to articulate.”
However, despite having a difficult time controlling the three youngsters, he has insisted he rarely has to raise his voice to get them to listen to his commands. He explained with humor in his voice: ”Those rare moments where I lose my temper and I really become a dad, I often think, ‘Oh, if anyone was a fly on the wall, they’d be like, ‘Will Ferrell is not a funny father! He’s way too strict.’ ”
Meanwhile, the funnyman recently gate-crashed the birthday party of a 100-year-old woman at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles – where he sang alongside two elderly women – and he believes such bravado is key to his career success. He said recently: ”I just don’t give a s**t how I look. It’s just that reckless abandon, the commitment to bare all. It’s kinda like walking on hot coals. It’s not that I wasn’t afraid to take the first step. Just once I did, the coals were never that hot.”