Andrew McCarthy and Son Sam on What They Learned From Each Other on 500-Mile Walk Through Spain (Exclusive)

etonline.com:

Andrew McCarthy and his actor son, Sam, embarked on a five-week journey across Spain's Camino de Santiago, which is chronicled in McCarthy's latest memoir, The book details the father-son expedition along the 500-mile pilgrimage as they attempt to connect on a deeper level and have candid, honest conversations about their relationship, life, fame and more.The trek is one McCarthy, who became a household name with coming-of-age 1980s films like and , is familiar with.

The actor embarked on the same walk about three decades earlier when he was much, much younger and recalled having a «life-changing» experience. «I always wanted to do it again and then as Sam was cusping adulthood, I thought it might be a great thing for us to do together,» McCarthy, 60, told ET's Rachel Smith in New York City in an exclusive sit-down with Sam, who most recently played Christina Applegate's TV son on . «I was in a very different place in my life,» McCarthy said of the first time he walked Spain when he was younger. «I was alone in the world.

I had no kids and I had just [had] all that early fame with the Brat Pack stuff so I was also finding my own feet. It really helped me do that and I just thought it might be nice, as Sam was growing, to rewrite our relationship a bit — not having it be so parent-child as opposed to two equal adults, to establish what that might be like.

Sam, at one point in the journey, said, 'It's really hard to see your parents as real people,' and I think the inverse is true, so the journey was an effort to see each other for who we are.»Sam was 19 when he joined his father on the trip and he revealed he «was in a weird place in [his] personal life» following the end of.