Popularly known for his role of the exasperated yet regal grandfather/ dad on Modern Family, the charismatic Ed O’Neill needs no introduction with his stellar career spanning several decades. However the 71-year-old veteran is still game to keeping up with the times and experimenting — as he exemplified recently with his brilliant turn as Hank the Octopus in Finding Dory! Here’s Ed talking to us about his new avatar in the smash hit sequel to Finding Nemo.
Q: Hi Ed, what can you tell us about the character of Hank?
Ed: I play this disgruntled octopus named Hank and he’s born in captivity in this sea aquarium thing and he likes to be left alone, he doesn’t like anybody and he likes to be alone. So he’s trying to get to Cleveland, Ohio where they have a place where he can be isolated.
He meets Dory in the aquarium and Dory has a tag and that tag means that she is going to Cleveland. So he finds out through a brief conversation that he has with Dory, that she has a short term memory problem and that she is trying to find her parents!
Q: How was it like doing your scene with Ellen DeGeneres?
Ed: I would listen to Ellen and she is so lovable in the film that it’s easy really to work those scenes out in your mind and your thinking to what her reactions are going to be. I mean you don’t know exactly, but it sort of makes it easier to do a scene with someone like her, because you like her. It’s even easy to be mad at her and ball her out and get these really interesting reactions.
Q: How is it like doing a voice over in animated films? How would you compare it to real life?
Ed: It’s almost better than real life. It’s so amazing how they mimic reality, yet they want you to still have that feeling that it’s not. You know they probably could make it look completely real, like some of the shots where you have people walking in the exhibits they looked like real people. I think that’s done on purpose, I think that everything they do is on purpose.
Q: You faced great success for your portrayal of Al Bundy in Married with Children. What do you think Hank and AL Bundy would talk about?
Ed: They’d have a lot to talk about (laughs). They would have a lot in common especially their nature. It would be fun to see if Hank went to the aquarium in Cleveland and his owner was Al Bundy!
(Watch Finding Dory on Star Movies and Star Movies Select HD
on the 1st of October at 1 pm and 9 pm)
