It's a Llama's life for Spade

I'm not sure where my sense of humour comes from - probably as a kid to cover up how microscopically short I was.

That Disney wanted me for something like this was weird, though. But since it was for a new audience, I thought why not? I've always loved Disney cartoons - sorry, Disney animation. I never thought I'd be in one.

I'm playing an obnoxious character, which isn't exactly a stretch for anyone who knows me. The Emperor Kuzco is your run-of-the-mill egocentric who has the misfortune of getting turned into a llama - a lesson in humility which happens all the time, I'm sure. Of course, this also means I spend almost all of this movie on four legs. Which presented one minor problem - at first the llama didn't talk. Fortunately, they soon enough realised, "no talkie, no funny". So eventually speech was put in.

There's no Robert De Niro character change going on, though. The llama and the emperor - we learned through trial and error - worked best when the voices were interchangeable. They videotaped me during recording sessions where I had the awful habit of doing an "Elvis" as I read the lines. That also became part of the character you see on screen... Remember, we worked on this on and off for three, almost four years. Animation, I found out, takes a lot longer than cartoons. It takes forever.

But to be honest, at first I didn't even know what it was about or who the character was. Sure enough, they told me: "This guy is kind of a brat. No one likes him. He has no friends. He's a sarcastic idiot. And we think you're perfect." Well, how would you like me to play it then? "Just be yourself," they said.