Hot Latina-girl hits the road

When I was a teenager I was called "The Voice", and I worked hard to lower my voice an octave and get it less shrieky. But for this film, which is animated so you only get my voice, I had to get it even lower and slow it down to match the sultry pace of my character, the smart, sexy Chel, an El Dorado girl.

Chel's actually the first Latina character to be animated. She matches a pair of bumbling scoundrels, Tulio, voiced by Kevin Kline, and Miguel, voiced by Ken Branagh, con for con. She and I are actually very similar but she's more cunning than I am - I'm not that savvy in that regard - and I'm more neurotic.

The story is about what happens after Tulio and Miguel win a map to El Dorado, the legendary lost city of gold in Mexico, and end up prisoners on the Spanish explorer Cortez's ship. Of course they escape, stumble upon El Dorado and only then do their real problems begin. The high priest, voiced by Armand Assante, proclaims them gods in order to use them to take the power away from the chief, voiced by Edward James Olmos.

Tulio and Chel fall in love and have some lovely scenes. Kevin and I had to create some chemistry so we ended up singing show tunes like "Clang, Clang, Clang Went The Trolley" from Meet Me In St Louis. I kid you not, that's how we bonded. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is the executive producer, promised me a solo but after that, all of a sudden, my solo went away. A pity because the songs are written by Elton John and Tim Rice. Hmmm.