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Updated 3/15/02

We're Hangin' With the voices of:

MANNY AND SID!

Actors Ray Romano and John Leguizamo are the voices of Manny the Mammoth and Sid the Sloth in the new animated film Ice Age. The movie is Ray ("Everybody Loves Raymond") Romano's first feature film and he has to play a big furry elephant thing! Leguizamo has many films to his credit, including the recent Moulin Rouge and a comic part in Collateral Damage. Both guys got a charge out of giving life to their prehistoric critters. When entertainment reporter Lynn b. talked with them recently, they were totally upbeat about their experience.

John did some strange research. He watched films of actual sloths in order to get under Sid's skin. Now sloths aren't exactly action heroes. "It was like watching erosion. Sloths are hard because first of all, they have no emotion, so slow, so I started to do all of the typical voices that suited him and that wasn't working. I tried high-pitched voices and so I said send me some Discovery Channel sloth footage and I watched four hours of that. Whoopie, it's the mating season!

Nailing a voice for the little creature wasn't easy for the actor. "The narrator said that they stored food in their cheeks. I started working on that and that's how I got the voice finally. [Does the lisp and voice].

Ray compared Manny to his Raymond character on t.v. "I think my voice lends itself to this guy. I think Manny is a version of the character I play on t.v. but he's not passive. He's probably more cynical and has a bigger chip on his shoulder but he's also a good guy too. The guy on t.v. wants to be left alone. He's kind of anti-social. He'd rather sit at home and scratch".

Ray had his own struggle getting into character but his dad inspired him. "I thought about who Manny was and what he was going through. I didn't delve too much into things like his (personal tragedy). It's easy to imagine this character. It's a little like my father almost. I just observed him for a while. Went there and smelt him for a week and I had a mammoth".

Unlike Billy Crystal and John Goodman in Monsters Inc. , Ray and John never got to record their voices in the same room. There were alone. John liked the isolation. "I look forward to doing these things by myself, no actors' egos, no entourage, no complaints about salaries, no competition, just go out there by yourself. You just go in there and I said crazy stuff, some of it didn't work. I would try to come up with something that might get Ray and then he would do it again and that's tweaking - you tweak it until it feels like the two voices are talking to each other. It's phenomenal".

Ray thought some of the work was a physical challenge. "It was just physically difficult. You're in front of the microphone and you can't move around, emote. There's a scene where you grab Diego and you throw him against the wall and you're in his face. Every time we would do it, I'd have to (physically) do that and I couldn't move too far from the mic so you get that taken away. And then there's no actor. I was never with another actor so there's no give and take there. There's no feedback. It wasn't like Aladdin where Robin Williams would just riff on something and they would just draw it to him and put it in. My guy is no nonsense, says what's on his mind and that's it."

Ray's kids had an influence on his taking this part. "The kids were a big part of it. The script was good. The timing was good. No conflict. I met the director and watched the Academy Award-winning short he did ("Bunny") so I knew this was gonna be some good stuff. Something nice to share with the kids. They are obsessed like you can't believe. It's almost scary. What have I created? My kids don't like that Skrat steals the show. That was the comment last night. I brought home the (press kit)and I got 'The Skrat, he's in it too much. I don't like that, dad. It should be you'".

John's Sid was in the film more too in the beginning, with two female sloths. Only one hot tub scene remains. "There were a lot more (adult jokes) but it's not what we wanted. Story of my life. The girl is always taken away from me".

John, an avid cartoon fan, was drawn to doing the film for several reasons. It brings out the kid in him and it's a way to be free as an actor. "I have always been a passionate admirer of cartoons. Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny, Daffy, Elmer Fudd, etc.) to me is one of the great comedians. And I learned so much from his comic timing and how each character was so uniquely different. And to me it was such an art and craft. I felt so excited when I saw Sid married to the voice and you couldn't tell it was me. I mean it was divorced of me it was just this one (character)".

Skrat gives his all to bury his beloved acorn. We wanted to know what could be this important to John and Ray. John answered first. "I think it's a lot of the scripts that I've written; all the recycled pile of jokes, stories and antidotes that I have. Gotta save those for the next ice age". Ray's "acorn" would involve something a little more physical. " Humm, something that I would want to thaw out in a million years? Boy, (Skrat) was saving that for food, a necessity. But for me, maybe a golf club. A seven iron". Is Ray an avid golfer? "Yeah. But that doesn't mean I'm good".

What's with John always playing short or tiny characters? He was a rat in Dr. Doolittle and a tiny sloth in Ice Age. He was diminutive artist Toulouse Lautrec in Moulin Rouge. "I definitely do feel like there is a little size prejudice going on. I wanted to be - you know - one of those bigger, tougher, cooler, (hotter), animals but I get rats and rodents." Ray hopes to do more feature films. "I'm not against doing a dramedy if it's there. They offered me this movie called "The Tree" which was like a "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" but it felt a little too big for me. A movie like "A Simple Plan" (would be good). It was a great, intense movie and it was just this regular guy thrown in this situation. Had great characters and all that". For now, we're happy seeing Ray and John as Manny and Sid.