Kate Mara Says Her Stepson, 11, Is ‘Obsessed’ with *The Astronaut*: ‘He Freaked Out the Entire Time’ (Exclusive).zin

Kate Mara Says Her Stepson, 11, Is The Astronaut‘s ‘Biggest Fan’: ‘He Was Freaking Out the Entire Time’ (Exclusive)

Kate Mara’s latest film The Astronaut has a very special fan—her 11-year-old stepson.

Ahead of the sci-fi thriller’s premiere at the SXSW Film & TV Festival, Mara, 42, shared with PEOPLE that she watched the movie for the first time with him, and his reaction was priceless.

“I brought my eldest kid with me to see the film for the first time—I hadn’t seen it yet. I brought him with me in a pretty big audience, and everyone was on the edge of their seats,” she said. “It feels very much like a roller coaster. You feel like you’re on a ride.”

But her stepson couldn’t wait for the suspenseful moments to unfold.

“He was freaking out the entire time,” Mara recalled. “He kept saying, ‘Tell me what’s going to happen! Tell me how it ends!’—literally from the very first scene. He was like, ‘Okay, what’s going to happen next?’ But he loves it. He has an astronaut jacket that he wears out every day. He’s the movie’s biggest fan.”

In The Astronaut, Mara stars as Sam Walker, an astronaut who returns from her first space mission only to experience eerie, otherworldly events while being monitored at a NASA safe house. The film, directed by Jess Varley, also stars Laurence Fishburne and Gabriel Luna.

Varley described how “sweet” it was to see Mara’s stepson so engaged with the movie.

“We went over for dinner not that long ago, and he was like, ‘I have a ton of questions,'” Varley said. Mara added, “Despite me being the lead in the movie, I think he understands it far better than I ever will.”

A highlight of the project for Mara was working with Fishburne, who also serves as an executive producer.

“He is the greatest storyteller ever,” she said. “By the end, no matter how much time we had between scenes, we’d sit in the green room and just talk about acting.”

Mara admired Fishburne’s passion for his craft.

“He’s been acting since he was a tiny kid,” she said. “I feel very much like that as well, and I’ve been acting since I was little too. To see someone I look up to still feeling that joy and sharing it with everyone—it’s amazing.”