Music has been of central importance to Disney movies for as long as I can remember. To contribute to that legacy, is a great honor.
I have so many aspirations and interests that would not fit within the Disney brand. I need to make sure I’m engaging those proclivities as well.
The Disney Channel puts out movies, like, every couple of months.
When I first heard from my manager, who asked me, ‘There’s this Disney ‘Mulan,’ do you want to audition for it?’ I’d heard that so many people were auditioning. So, I asked myself what I could bring.
A lot of my income has been derived from voicing Disney and family programming.
I go to the movies, and I watch MTV and the Disney Channel. I admit I like ‘Hannah Montana.’
Fair Oaks Farm in Indiana – listen, if you have a chance to go there, it’s better than Disney World, because it’s all real.
I said to myself as Junction Point embarked on the Epic Mickey journey that, worst case, we’d be ‘a footnote in Disney history.’ Looking back on it, I think we did far better than that.
I’m trying to build a Disney. Not only as a creator, but also be able to create universes where then that content can go into toys, and live on multimedia platforms, whether it’s apps, books, movies, cartoons. It’s like building a whole world, which takes a lot of money.
Between the theme parks and the movies, the Disney iconography was probably the first set of archetypes that I was exposed to. Walt was able to expose me as a child to the full array of emotions, including fear and sorrow. Those movies and attractions haunted my dreams and made a deep impression on me as a child.
I have a studio at my house, and there is a sister studio for Disney which is about 45 minutes away, and we haven’t dropped a beat. In the art of animation and voiceover work, you can pretty much work from anywhere.
I got the chance to do things that I dreamed of when I was a kid: I got to travel around the world; I had my own ‘Goosebumps’ attraction at Disney World; I’ve been on TV and had three TV series.
How comedic are squirrels? We don’t have squirrels in Australia. The first time I saw a squirrel was at a meeting at Disney.
Luckily, I went to school at CalArts, and then ended up here at Disney, starting in the Animation Building and working my way up. I started as an animator, and then did character designing and storyboarding, and eventually, directing.
We’ve been able to access deals that under our former relationship with Disney – with tax advantages and strategic partners – that we just weren’t able to do.
So many people from the West are coming into India, all the studios have come into India, and they’re making films here, whether that’s Fox, Warner Bros, Disney, everyone. That stands as testament for us, so why are we afraid of sharing our talent with the world? We must.
Before Disney, I did other shows so I was aware of the business. They’re all the same in that they’re a professional environment. The only difference between a Disney show and other network shows are in the age of the actors you’re working with and the age of the intended audience.
Ariel got me into animation. She was the first Disney heroine that really felt alive. She felt like a real young woman.
One of the best animated films I’ve seen come out of Disney was the Tarzan movie. I wasn’t crazy about the story or the design on Tarzan’s face, but the traditional animation was spectacular.
I think ‘Disney Infinity’ is exciting. It’s hard to even call it a video game, because it’s so different. What excites me about this is how it’s going to put more and more of what happens in the game into the hands of the user; it’s up to them. You can play it to where everything’s laid out for you.
In college, I was a cartoonist at ‘The Daily Northwestern.’ So I draw myself. I was an animator. But basically, I went to Northwestern to major in English, wound up in college for two years. Studied animation there. Came to Disney. My first week at Disney was the week that ‘Star Wars’ came out.
Fame is a funny thing. I like doing normal things. I like going to fairs. I like going to ball games. I like going to Disney World or a big field on the Fourth of July and having picnics with friends. The problem is you’re either worried you’re going to be recognized, or you’re thankful you’re not. It’s always there.
I even went to film school at School of Visual Arts in New York City. And then, after that, I got a day job at Universal publicity department, then moved over to Disney publicity department. So I had this day job, and at night I would study music.
I love soundtracks to movies and am always touched by the music if it’s good. The music in some old Disney movies, like ‘Pinocchio,’ ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Peter Pan’ really gets to me.
Walt Disney was my great hero.
I’m glad Metro Station didn’t turn out like Jonas Brothers. They need a Disney movie to become famous. Our songs overpower that.
I started out as a producer. and I used to work at Disney. and I worked with a lot of the animators and went on to become great friends with a lot of these guys and worked on a lot of projects together.
I’m the first social media star cast as a regular on a Disney Channel series, and I think I’m the first one under 25 from social media to become a series regular.
I think, if I had a big flop, that probably it would have ended the string at Disney, but it didn’t! Every film was a success.
Our parents didn’t let us watch a lot of television growing up. We had Disney on Sunday nights, and at 8:30, they were like, ‘Turn it off! Go to bed!’
There’s not one major greatest influence on my career. It would be film and great artists and great imagineers – Jim Henson, Walt Disney, Charlie Chaplin, people who understand the joy of the imagination.
I joined Walt Disney, went to work, December 2nd 1935, so obviously, I’m not too young!
I had done a bunch of stuff before I even went to Disney. I’m so grateful for what Disney gave me and the experiences that I got, but at the end of the day, I can do so much more than what I did on that channel and in those movies.
People used to laugh that academics would study Disney movies. There’s nothing more important for academics to study, because they shape the minds of our children possibly more than any single thing.
A lot of my stand-up point of view is family – not Disney but dealing with teenagers.
I first met Walt Disney 25 or 30 years ago.
I never quite understood why Disney hadn’t made a sincere fairy tale since ‘Beauty and the Beast.’
Marx was fortunate to have been born eighty years before Walt Disney. Disney also promised a child’s paradise and unlike Marx, delivered on his promise.
No one thought that the Disney Superpower had the ability to laugh at itself, but ‘Enchanted’ proved everyone wrong.
When it comes to classic Disney, I’ve got it in my DNA. I mean, the guy who trained me, the man who mentored me when I first came to the Studio was Eric Larson, one of Walt’s Nine Old Men.
I was a big fan of Shia LaBeouf and ‘Even Stevens’ and was like, ‘Oh, man. I would love to be on Disney Channel and have a show,’ because it was what I watched.
The whole Disney thing is really interesting, in a way, how that’s so permeated life and the world and the planet.
I think jewelry is beautiful on all women and I think it’s sentimental – and Disney is sentimental. It’s subtle and it’s low-key and it’s just a sweet reminder of sweetness.
My VHS collection certainly contains videos that I’ve had since childhood, and also tapes that my mom had taped off of the Disney Channel or HBO – you know, blank tapes with the ‘Care Bears’ movie or whatever is on there – but I feel like that collection started for real my freshman year of college.
People always ask me, ‘Is there a rivalry between the Nickelodeon and Disney stars? Do you guys hate each other?’ Like everyone has to be on one team. If you’re a Selena Gomez fan, you can’t be a Victoria Justice fan. We’re both half-Latin, and people put us in the same category.
I have always thought of Walt Disney as my second father.
Is Walt turning over in his grave? A man named Joe Roth runs Disney right now-he gave me the go-ahead and total freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.
I love working for Disney! They are my family.
I met my agent through a casting director here in Wilmington after I auditioned for a Disney movie.
People talk a lot about, ‘You’re a Disney princess! You’re Cinderella!’ and this and that. But for me, it’s all about the fact that I worked with Cate Blanchett and was directed by Kenneth Branagh. That’s the ‘Cinderella’ story for me.
I like Prague, it’s strange. All the houses you see look like Disney sets, with their bright colours.
Probably the biggest contribution that Disney has made to the Lucasfilm franchise management was their international component. That was something Lucasfilm hadn’t made significant inroads with.
Disney is a machine, and I’m grateful for it, but I feel like being part of that environment made me crave the reaction from other projects even more.
The cool part about working for Disney is that they’ve allowed me to be a change agent.
I remember seeing my first Disney film when I was 13 or 14. It was ‘Jungle Book,’ and I remember really falling in love with it.
The most challenging roles were Disney’s ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Mars Needs Moms’ because they were both motion capture, so there was a lot of physical work involved.
