Tim McGraw Relates to ‘Strong’ Themes

In 'Country Strong,' Tim McGraw plays James Canter, husband and manager of troubled country superstar, Kelly Canter, played by Gwyneth Paltrow.

As the film opens, Kelly is leaving rehab to return to the road, despite have a very fragile relationship with sobriety. Tim admits that his own past struggles with alcohol made it easy to relate to Gwyneth's character, "Oh yeah, absolutely," he said during a recent press junket for the film. He says the comparisons even lent themselves to a few chuckles with his family, including wife Faith Hill.

"Funny story," he continued. "I told [my sister] about the movie when I was going to do it and we were talking. She sent me back a text and said, 'Now let me get this straight. That's odd. Gwyneth's playing you and you're playing Faith?' [laughs] And I said, 'Ha, ha. Thanks for the support, Sis.'"

On a more serious note, he says Kelly's issues went far beyond his ever did. "Look, I had some problems, but this was a whole deeper thing here."

James and Kelly have difficulty juggling their roles as husband and wife with the roles as manager and artist. In real life, Tim says his and Faith's pairing in no way resembles that of James and Kelly. "It's a totally different relationship than I have with my wife because [Faith's] actually the boss." He added with a laugh, "I don't know anything about being in charge in our relationship."

Tim looked to another celebrity coupling to help him begin thinking about his character: Reba McEntire and her husband/manager, Narvel Blackstock. "I did sort of start my look [based] on Narvel a bit," he says, but quickly adds that "My character is nothing like Narvel, but just to sort of get the ball rolling, I had an image of [him] when I was creating this character."

If you haven't seen the movie yet, click here to see proof of just how much Tim's character looks like Narvel.