Now Benedict Cumberbatch is facing his biggest challenge yet: playing a dad.

He plays a dad, of course, a television weatherman whose boss (played by Pam Grier), in an effort to improve the station's ratings, has him dress up - as Jack Frost, or a gaudy Hawaiian tourist.

The lead actor in one is best known for playing a bumbling dad on a Fox sitcom.

Jim Carrey reined himself in to play the least antic character in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," and Adam Sandler played a sensitive dad in "Spanglish."

After a decade on television, actor David Hobbs (Scott Baio) becomes a stay-at-home dad so his soap-opera star wife (Alanna Ubach) can get back in the spotlight, but he quickly realizes that playing a dad on television is much different from the real thing.

Clive Owen plays a troubled and protective dad - he is danger of becoming a little stereotyped in these roles - with a rather implausible blue-collar job sitting astride steel girders on buildings way up in the air, fixing rivets.

He said he was not comfortable of playing a dad to the actor of his age.

Still to come is the awful Ghost Dad, basically another attempt to get Bill Cosby's TV act to work on the big screen (Bill plays a workaholic dad who, once dead, gets to spend more time with his family).