By Rollo Ross and Danielle Broadway
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Voicing the iconic lazy, orange cat in “The Garfield Movie” reminded Chris Pratt of himself when he was in his late 20s and early 30s.
“I ate so much all the time, and I was very lazy,” he told Reuters.
“I never exercised and I ate a whole bunch, and it was great,” the “Guardians of the Galaxy” actor added. “So, now I don’t have that any longer, but I do have the sense that I’m constantly pampered. So, depending on the season of my life we’re talking about, there are similarities in the characters, but I’ve yet to be all of them all at once.”
Pratt humorously noted that his connection to his character became stronger in several ways leading up to his interview.
“I’ve become Garfield. Look. I’ve got orange all around me. I was pampered and pet all morning before this interview and now I’m going to eat a big bowl of lasagna,” he said.
The famed 1976 comic strip from cartoonist Jim Davis is going from page to animation. Distributed by Sony Pictures, it arrives in U.S. movie theaters on Friday.
The film follows Garfield, a lethargic and greedy orange cat, as he’s snatched away from his pampered lifestyle and forced to carry out a heist for the sake of his alley cat father Vic, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson.
Pratt is no stranger to voicing animated characters following his experience portraying the Italian plumber Mario in the box office success “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and voicing the elf Barley Lightfoot in Pixar’s “Onward.”
For the 44-year-old actor, it was easy to take on the role because Dindal, a well-known animation pioneer known for leading hits like “The Emperor’s New Groove,” already imagined his voice being used for Garfield, making it an effortless fit.
“Mark Dindal (the director) said ‘I’ve been working on this for a couple of years, and I just hear your voice coming out of his mouth. To me, this is Chris Pratt as a cat,’” Pratt said.
Getting approval from Davis, whose comic strip has been published in over 2,000 newspapers and journals around the world, meant a lot to Pratt.
“Yeah, he’s the character’s creator, and I just heard recently that he gave a sweet quote and rated me a 10 out of 10 as the voice of Garfield,” Pratt said.
“I don’t think I’d quite realized how much pressure I’d been feeling to get the sign-off from him, and, so, the fact that he felt that way means a lot to me,” he added
(Reporting by Rollo Ross and Danielle Broadway; Editing by Mary Milliken and Jonathan Oatis)
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