What is the creative process like on a Shrek movie?
Antonio Banderas: It’s definitely a space of freedom they create for us, very different from other animated movies. I didn’t know much about animation, only what I got from my wife. Melanie played the little bird in Stuart Little and the method they used from that project was totally different to what we do. She said it was very, very tiring. They had to repeat lines again and again to find exactly the sound. This is nothing like what we do [for Shrek]. We basically go free. We do the lines written in the original script and then they say, “OK, you are free.” They want to hear you improvising, changing things. They asked your opinions about things, what the character should do physically–hide behind that tree, go on top of the shoulder of Shrek, what kind of input will that have on Donkey. So a very creative environment. We also have the artists imitate our body language. It’s freaky. The first time you go to the movie theater and see a cat behaving like yourself, doing eyes like this
