Kristen Bell's news director dad gave her insider advice for Big Miracle role

Kristen Bell had no trouble playing a TV reporter in upcoming movie Big Miracle - because her news director dad helped prep her for the role.

In the film, which is based on a true story, Bell plays a local reporter covering an international rescue effort to free a family of whales trapped under the ice of the Arctic Circle.

And the Forgetting Sarah Marshall star didn't need to do too much research for the part - because her journalist father often took her to work with him at a San Antonio, Texas news station.

She tells New York Magazine, "I grew up going to the station with him and being able to play with the Teleprompters, knowing the behind the scenes of news directing."

But Bell confesses she wishes she had pumped her dad for more historical background since he presided over the actual footage of the whale rescue story in 1988: "I wish, in retrospect, that I had asked him how this event affected him. And I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t."