Actor Benjamin Hollingsworth wants his three children to inherit something he loved long before VIRGIN RIVER: the freedom to head outside and come home when the sun goes down.
“I’m happy to provide them with some of what I got growing up,” he told Fox News Digital.
For Hollingsworth, that means sports, family hikes and days on the water whenever they can manage them. His description of their life outside Los Angeles sounds less like a celebrity escape and more like a familiar parenting wish: give the kids room to play and people around them who care.
“Even our neighborhood is a very tight-knit community,” he said. That setting, he explained, allows his children to head off to play with a time to be back, much as he did growing up.
He knows that kind of freedom isn’t easy to recreate everywhere. Contrasting his neighborhood with a busy Los Angeles street, Hollingsworth said parents in a major city face a different situation when letting children venture out.
“It’s really, really tricky to do that,” he said. He expressed gratitude that his own children can experience a version of the outdoor childhood he remembers.
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The decision to settle somewhere smaller grew out of a family milestone. According to Fox News, Hollingsworth said he and his wife decided to put down roots in a smaller community while expecting their third child during production of VIRGIN RIVER’s third season.
He declined to name the town but said the series helped inspire the move. He described raising children in a small community as a luxury he and his wife feel fortunate to provide, rather than something they take for granted.
Viewers know Hollingsworth as Dan Brady on Netflix’s VIRGIN RIVER, a Marine veteran struggling to find his footing. Away from the character’s complicated life, the actor’s family stories tend to return to shared activities and memories handed from one generation to the next.
In a December 2025 interview with Country Living, Hollingsworth discussed raising sons Hemingway and Gatsby and daughter Juniper with his wife, Nila. He said becoming a dad had brought back childhood memories he hadn’t realized were still tucked away.
“Reliving it through their eyes brings back memories from when I was a kid and that’s something I wasn’t expecting,” he said of celebrating Christmas with his children.
His examples were ordinary but specific: Christmas morning and trips to hockey practice. He also described making Christmas cookies together and cutting down the family’s own tree, complete with a tarp to keep it from collecting mud and bugs on the way back.
Hollingsworth told the magazine that he and Nila remind their children Christmas involves more than presents, candy and stockings. Tobogganing and singing carols together belong in the picture, too.
Those holiday traditions and his latest comments about outdoor play share a simple thread: he wants his children to have experiences they can carry with them. For this dad, a neighborhood adventure or a family hike offers a chance to pass a little of his own childhood along.
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