"My advisers offered me a couple, and I didn't quite think they that were there," continues Travolta. "Then finally Dick Cook [Disney studio chairman] called and said, 'I think we got the one for you, and it's going to be high end.' John was involved and Miley was involved and Susie was involved. I thought, 'Well geez, this is starting to look like a high-end animated feature, and maybe this is the one to say yes to.' And when I read the script, although I couldn't really imagine what it would end up like because it's only in the animator's imagination, you have to take a little bit of risk and you have to trust that it's going in the direction that you want."

Once he signed on, says Travolta, "Working with the filmmakers was fantastic and Chris Williams was a revelation to me. His affection for animation was infections, and I was so tickled by everything we were doing and his choices. The collaborative effort was huge. This guy really knows what he's doing and had a vision for what the film should be."

Echoes Susie Essman who voices Mittens, "Chris was incredible, because let's say I did 20 versions of something and then he listens to all 20, he's like, 'Alright, I like number 2 and number 17.'"

"I've never had so much input, in the director-actor relationships, as you do in an animated feature," continues Travolta. "You are dependent on the director completely, for all the things you can't think of, so you're supplying for us the ambiance, the emotional levels from one to ten."

"You have to give a direction," says Williams of working with his voice actors. "Like: 'You're character's running while they give this line.' Then they'll say, 'Well, how fast are they running?' 'Well, pretty fast.' So you really have to help them conjure up everything about the scene. I have great empathy for our actors. It's a very draining experience, to act in an animated movie."

"I think it's one of the toughest acting jobs, from my standpoint," says Lasseter. "Because they really do not have the inspiration from the set, from the other cast members, if they're on stage, from the energy of the audience, from even the costume that they're wearing. They really are just in the studio with the director, and have to kind of go deep inside them for emotions, for energy&ellips; As a director you have to talk to them about, 'okay, they're in a moving car, there's going to be a lot of ambient noise.'"

Part of the processes, says Lasseter, is showing the actors the animation that is being developed based on their recordings. The animators take cues from the recording, and then the actors can take cues from the animation. But with recording always done before animation, what the actors do is more than just filling in a sound bite. In addition to the influence the actor's vocal delivery has on their character's animation, video tapes of each actor's recording are also taken as visual references.

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