You can continue reading the article in its entirety over at The Associated Press

Chris Pine is boldly going where Capt. Kirk has never gone before. In his sibling drama “People Like Us,” he gets slapped around by his mom and pummeled by his sister.

The earthbound sibling drama is light-years from Pine’s role as forceful ladies man Kirk in “Star Trek. And it’s a departure for “People Like Us” director Alex Kurtzman and producer Roberto Orci, who moonlighted on the intimate screenplay for nearly eight years as they co-wrote such action epics as “Star Trek” and its upcoming sequel, the first two “Transformers” flicks, “Mission: Impossible III” and “Cowboys & Aliens.”

In very un-Kirk-man-like fashion, Pine gets a sharp slap to the face in his first scene with Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays his mother, angry that it took his father’s death for her self-absorbed son to finally come home for a visit.

After discovering his dad had a daughter with another woman, Pine’s Sam ends up getting the stuffing beaten out of him by his newfound half-sister, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks).
Pfeiffer and Banks put their all into it, recalls Pine, who unlike action man Kirk, had to stand there and take his lumps.

“Liz is a tornado when you unleash her,” Pine said in an interview alongside Kurtzman and Orci to promote “People Like Us,” which opens Friday.

As for taking a palm to the cheek from Pfeiffer, Pine remembers it coming in the first scene the two shot together.

“I recall very, like, method-y, whispering conversations between Alex and Michelle before the first take, and then she slapped the (crap) out of me,” Pine said. “There’s something to be said for it, because there really is no way to duplicate the shock of that.

“And similarly, the scene with Banks, there’s just no way. The way that they shot it, it was very kind of handheld, super-present, really in the room, fly-on-the-wall kind of stuff. There’s no way to mime that to make that real. It wasn’t going to be really violent, she never hit me in the face or anything. So you could let her go rip-riot with a certain amount of safety involved. That was important to capture, because Liz, Frankie, in that moment is rightfully, righteously angry at Sam.”

While promoting their new comedic drama “People Like Us,” Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks faced off over their two franchises – “Star Trek” and “The Hunger Games.”

Make sure you check out the interview in full over at USAToday.com

The franchise shot the actor to fame in 2009 when he took on Captain Kirk. And years after filming it, its co-writer delivered just the kind of meaty, dialogue-driven role Pine had been on the hunt for.

Filming the first Star Trek, “I was so focused on not (screwing) up that I just had blinders on to everything and everyone on set who was not in my direct path,” says Pine, who recalls meeting the film’s co-writer Alex Kurtzman briefly.

But then Kurtzman “called me up really out of the blue at home,” says Pine, 31, and he sent over a script for People Like Us (out Friday), a film inspired by Kurtzman and writing partner Roberto Orci’s own lives.
The script was packed with emotional minefields: an absentee father who’s hidden his adult love child, Frankie (Elizabeth Banks), from his son, Sam (Pine). A narcissistic, secretive mother (Michelle Pfeiffer). And a payload in the form of $150,000, left in Sam’s hands for Frankie upon their father’s death.

Pine signed on to the Kurtzman-directed dramedy within days. “I love the character,” he says of Sam, his cocky, fast-talking salesman. “I thought he was flawed and funny and dark but in a really human kind of dark way.”

Sam, an “epic plate-spinning, super-adroit cocktail-party chatterer,” is challenged with ditching his honed salesman shtick and facing his boxed-up past.

For Pine, the beauty in this family was in its flaws.

“What I loved about (the film), which was on the page, is that there are no golden pink bow ties by the end of the film,” he says. As his character navigates the waters after his father’s death and confronts the women in his life, including his hard-edged mother, Lillian (Pfeiffer), and his girlfriend (Olivia Wilde), “they all kind of still hate one another, and Sam doesn’t fully get along with his mom, (but) he chooses to love her for all of her faults. He and Frankie, they were all just kind of entering the town of people — almost becoming human to be like, ‘I’m screwed up, are you?’ That was kind of the message of it I liked.”

I’ve added 121 photos of Chris at The Cinema Society Screening of ‘People Like Us’ in New York City, which took place last night.

A big thank you to DeA of Lea-Michele.com for the photos.

Gallery Link:
– 2012 > 06/25/2012 – The Cinema Society hosts a Screening of DreamWorks Studios “People Like Us”

I’ve added an additional 57 photos to the ‘This Means War’ press conference that was held on February 4th and also 22 photos to the ‘People Like Us’ press conference, which took place on June 14th.

Gallery Links:
– 2012 > 02/04/2012 – ‘This Means War’ Press Conference
– 2012 > 06/14/2012 – ‘People Like Us’ Press Conference

I’ve added 20 photos of Chris and Elizabeth’s visit into the gallery. 🙂

Gallery Link:
– 2012 > 06/25/2012 – Visiting Good Morning America