All the better to act for you, my dear

By ANNE BESTON

A pack of Hollywood movie stars lined up for the media yesterday and my, what big teeth they had.

The wolf stars of Disney's $170 million The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, directed by New Zealander Andrew Adamson, have almost finished filming and head home to Los Angeles this month.

Posing for the cameras at Mark Vette's Rescue Zoo in Tuakau, the cross-breed North American wolves are varying degrees of the real thing.

During the shoot they tracked through snow, knocked over furniture, snarled, bared their big teeth and howled in a wolf-like way.

Trainer Eadie McMullan said because the animals were not full-blooded wolves only some were natural howlers. But no problem.

They are trained to look like a howling pack of wolves even if only one or two are actually making the noise.

The wolves came mostly from a wolf rescue organisation in the United States and share their "Gentle Jungle" animal actors' home with a range of wild and exotic animals used on movie sets around the world.

Ms McMullan has worked with everything from cheetahs to rats.

But Rugby, a mamalute-wolf cross, who with his co-stars played one of the evil White Witch's minions on the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, has a special place in her heart.

"He's ultra sensitive, if you so much as raise your voice to him, he just shrinks up," she said.

"But Rugby is his original name, so I guess he was meant to come to New Zealand."