Jennifer Tilly: Gypsy Fortune Teller to... Cow?

She's a very pretty brunette with a baby girl voice. You last saw her as the comic head of a fortune teller in a glowing green orb in the Eddie Murphy film Haunted Mansion. You might have caught her as Jim Carrey's gold digger client in Liar Liar and in the horror comedy Bride of Chucky about a certain pair of demon dolls. Jennifer Tilly has done voice work in animated films and really enjoys it. She was a voice in Stuart Little and the voice of Celia, Mike Wazowski's snake-haired girlfriend in the hit Monsters Inc. Now, the actress voices Grace, a new age, optimistic and tone-deaf cow in the Disney animated musical film Home on the Range alongside Rosanne Barr and Dame Judi Dench who play her bovine gal pals.

Because Jennifer has such a cute, tiny voice, she is often mistaken for being "dippy". Not true. This is a very friendly, intelligent and very funny woman. We sat down to chat in L.A. and I admired her satin blouse with appliqué flowers. Jennifer told us all about acting with her voice and the fun of singing...badly. We had heard that she came to the film a little late.

TeenHollywood: Is it true that you replaced another actress in this part?

Jennifer: My manager called up and said I was offered this part. He said I was replacing another actor. She is a similar type as me. (We've heard that it was Melanie Griffith who voiced Stuart's birdie girlfriend in Stuart Little 2). When you do the cartoon voices it's a really specific skill. You have to be more animated in your voice. When you're playing a singing cow, there's no such thing as over the top. When I first started doing cartoons I was really bad.

TeenHollywood: Isn't it hard because the other actors aren't in the room when you record your voice?

Jennifer: Yeah. I showed up the first day and I was like, 'when do the other actors get here?' and they said, 'other actors? Go to the mike! Start speaking.' I didn't know how to work by myself. But now I love it. You develop a technique, when you get on a roll and you do the line eight, nine, 10 times, and you just do it until you're happy. Which is like very liberating and really fun. When you're doing a cartoon you can do as many takes as you like and you can do it different ways and ad lib and come up with different things.

TeenHollywood: Can you give us an example?

Jennifer: I do remember that they were so fascinated by my bad singing that they found places to insert songs. Every three or four weeks they'd call up and they'd say, 'Can Jennifer come in and sing another bad song for us?' And then they only used about probably one-tenth of the songs that I sang. I did that thing where you stop and people think you're finished and then you start again. They loved it. I think there's probably an underground CD going around now, 'Jennifer Tilly's Song Stylings.' And then Mr. [Alan] Menken [composer] wouldn't let me be on the soundtrack. I think he thought that would scuttle his Grammy dream. 'Sorry, Miss Tilly's voice is going nowhere near KD Lang and Bonnie Raitt. No, not even as a joke.'

TeenHollywood: Is it hard to try to sing badly?

Jennifer: It's horrifyingly easy not to sing well. You just have to not hit any of the notes, have no kind of tempo, and when you think you're getting bad, sing louder.

TeenHollywood: This is an animated Western. Do you like Westerns?

Jennifer: Oh, I love Westerns. I wish the Western would come back. Maybe with this and The Alamo, it will. I like the archetypes, you know, the bad guy and the good guy and the strong silent guy and family values. I think this film is sort of like a bovine Thelma and Louise. You see where they have a domesticated happy sort of singing life, and then they go out into the great beyond and they face all these challenges, and find their inner cow resources.

TeenHollywood: Did you get to become friends with Rosanne Barr?

Jennifer: I love Roseanne. I used to do her talk show all the time. She's just really fun and I love what she does with the character. I've been working on this movie for three years. Between Judi Dench, who's sort of up high, and myself who's kind of floaty, I think they needed somebody raunchier, or earthy, or more grounded.

TeenHollywood: Was this different than your experience on Monsters Inc.?

Jennifer: I would say not a lot of difference. I think on this movie, just because it was further along in my voice over career, I did more ad libbing. I think on Monsters, Inc. I kind of did the lines more the way that they wrote it. And on Home on the Range, I got to sing really loudly.

TeenHollywood: Grace is sort of a New Agey cow. She's very positive. Are you like that?

Jennifer: I am. And you know, when you see a cow spouting New Agisms, you realize what a cliche a lot of the things that you say are. But I do write positive affirmations on the little post-its and stick it on the mirror. I do think I am a child of the universe. I have been known to clutch crystals when I'm on the plane, I think that will help the pilot land better. And I have a dream catcher that I take with me to hang over my bed and I have a smudge stick when I go into the hotel rooms. I get out all the bad energy of the people. You know, when you travel a lot you have to kind of make the space your own.

TeenHollywood: You were a head in a jar, now a cow. How weird is it to play parts where you aren't all there?

Jennifer: [laughs] I go where the work is. I just started getting really strange parts. I love doing different things, and I love doing the cartoons because basically you can work forever no matter how old you get. It's freeing to play a character that has no relation to reality whatsoever. I loved doing The Haunted Mansion. But, I am looking forward though to playing a part where all my body parts come into play.

TeenHollywood: How do you get in the mindset of playing a cow?

Jennifer: Well, I grew up on a farm, and let me tell you, none of the cows that I saw sang or practiced new age philosophy. Cows are actually the stupidest, most boring creatures on the face of the earth. In the beginning, I was trying to do cow characteristics, like I was experimenting with having her laugh like [cow laugh with moo.] Then I'd say, 'OK, that's just stupid.' I went back to the drawing board and I looked at the script and I saw she was a New Age cow, and so I just thought I'd do sort of a New Age voice. So I tried to sound a little bit like my Yoga teacher. 'You're entering a calm, peaceful space.' So that was sort of what I was trying to do. Just come up with a great character as opposed to a cow character.

TeenHollywood: Have you had any weird fan encounters?

Jennifer: As I was standing in line at the Dior sample sale, there was a really long line that snaked out, up three flights of stairs. And as I stood in line, this girl turned around and saw me, she says [screaming]; 'Ah, it's Jennifer Tilly! It's Jennifer Tilly!' I was like, 'OK.' And then she was really embarrassed, because she had to stand in line in front of me for the next 45 minutes. She didn't totally think it out.

TeenHollywood: We hear that you get drawn as a character in a lot of comic books. Why is that?

Jennifer: Did you see me in the "Spider-Man" comic book? And I was in "Iron Man". Iron Man was saving Jennifer Tilly. Because I love the Marvel Comic books. In "Spider-Man", somebody wins a trip on a celebrity retreat, and I was one of the celebrities.

TeenHollywood: A lot of teens enjoy the "Chucky" movies. Will there be another one?

Jennifer: Yes! It's a very silly script. I play the doll, the little homicidal doll, and then I also play myself, Jennifer Tilly, the international star of films.

TeenHollywood: What is it like to work with that weird doll? Isn't her name Tiffany?

Jennifer: Yeah. There's actually a scene where we're on the phone, where Jennifer is on the phone and Tiffany is on the phone pretending to be me, I recorded the Tiffany voice and it's fun because I have a lot of input so I say derogatory things about myself and my career. I had Tiffany saying, 'I think Ms. Tilly's career is very underrated. I saw her in this movie where she played an Eskimo with Lou Diamond Phillips, and she looked really cold. She's a really good actress.' And then there's another thing where I said, 'I think playing me in Bride of Chucky she's finally going to get the Oscar recognition that she deserves.'

TeenHollywood: It sounds wild. Who else is in it?

Jennifer: Billy Boyd plays the voice of Chucky's son, and John Waters plays a certain paparazzi, and the rapper Redman plays the director of this Biblical epic. He says God told him to make a movie about the Bible. So I'm auditioning to be the Virgin Mary in a Biblical epic. Redman is playing himself but he's branching out to films.

TeenHollywood: So how do you prepare for a film like that?

Jennifer: One of the things I'm trying to do is lose some weight. When you're playing yourself, you can't say, 'hey, there's Jennifer Tilly! She's fat!' So I'm starting to lose some weight, but the problem is I'm not hungry until I say, 'OK, from now on, only lean meat and steamed vegetables.' All of a sudden I'm craving fattening foods. So, when I was recording the Tiffany doll's voice, just in case I didn't lose any weight, I put in some references to how big I was. Like, there's a scene where Chucky is dragging my boyfriend and Tiffany is dragging me, and they're huffing and puffing and Chucky goes, 'Ah, this is the worst part about being a doll when you have to move the bodies.' And Tiffany goes, 'What the **** are you complaining about? I've got the fat one.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood - based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.