A quick word with: The voice cast of Over the Hedge

Avril Lavigne plays a teen marsupial in 'Over the Hedge'.

The stars behind the new Dreamworks animated feature share some characteristics with their woodland characters.

Bruce Willis as RJ The Raccoon

RJ and David Addison from Moonlighting are alike in that they both get a big kick out of life, they're both scoundrels, both charming handsome and charismatic ... Did I mention handsome, athletic, furry - a bit less today though, let's face facts. Look Who's Talking was easy compared to this. It was just me and Amy Heckerling watching the film and trying to think of wacky things to put in this little kid's mouth.

William Shatner as Ozzie The Possum

The strangeness of these animated films - and I've done several of them - is that you're acting alone.

If you knew what the other person was going to do then you could respond to them, but I don't know how Avril Lavigne's going to play her lines so you rely on the director for that.

At first I couldn't understand why they chose me. Now I know its partly because of my Shakespearean training, because the directors wanted to play on the fact that possums play dead as a form of protection and they wanted that to be kind of Shakespearean and over the top.

I didn't recognise myself at all when I saw the film. Ozzie looks like a possum to me.

I saw the film with my three-year-old granddaughter, who was fretting a little. She thought the bear was a little frightening and that froze her in her seat. But then she thawed out for the rest of the movie.

Avril Lavigne as Heather the Possum (daughter of Ozzie)

I think maybe the directors liked me because they thought I would bring some attitude. Heather is just like a teenager, she gets embarrassed by her dad and they thought I would be good to play that too. When I first saw the movie it was my first time to see my voice coming out of a little character and it was a really cool experience. When I first saw it I was laughing, I thought 'Oh God'.

Nick Nolte as Vincent The Bear

In 40 years of doing films this was the first time I had no idea what my character would look like. I found the process quite interesting and it was more collaborative than I expected.

I did a lot of research on bears of course. I was not going to be [producer] Jeffrey Katzenberg's bear, so it's different than what Jeffrey wanted. I had a great time doing that. It was fun to come up with the bear's roar. I found the mating call of the black bear and I did that and Jeffrey said I couldn't use it. I went on the internet and it said "listen to different bears, listen to a black bear, here's two bears mating, there's a bear that's been shot".

I chose a combination of grizzly and a bit of a black bear, because a black bear has a bit of a high pitch and humour to him and the grizzly's got the fierceness. But they wouldn't let me do the mating call at all.

* Over the Hedge opens Thursday.