Actor and director Sean Astin made his name as the child lead in hit 1985 film ‘The Goonies’ and has also starred in the ‘Lord Of The Rings’ trilogy. Now he’s the voice of the latest Disney animation…

Tell us about ‘Special Agent Oso’ - the new Disney series.
I was actually working on ‘The Colour Of Magic’, the Terry Pratchett book adaptation in the UK when I was sent the pictures for Oso.

He’s this sort of stout little colourful panda bear special agent, clearly inspired by none other than James Bond, and I looked in his little eyes and I thought: ‘Okay, that’s me.’ Our first recording session was patched through from a central London recording studio and that’s where the sound of the character was born.

What’s your character like?
He’s great. He’s very adventurous. He’s keen to go wherever, whenever, to accomplish his mission and help little children learn some task or other. He always makes mistakes but he’s got a fantastic attitude.

He’s got every gadget you can imagine, from submarines and spaceships to bullet trains all to himself, and there’s nothing he can’t do. At least there’s nothing he can’t learn to do. He’s perfect - he’s like me!

It’s a far cry from playing Sam Gamgee in ‘Lord of the Rings’. What are your memories of working on those classic movies?
When you compliment something you’ve done, you run the risk of kind of minimising some of the other things you’ve done.
I think it’s fair to say it’s the most significant work of my life. Peter Jackson is the only person who could really have done that because of his vision. Even the most brilliant film-makers, their movies are untouchable, fantastic, but they couldn’t have done ‘Lord Of The Rings’ the way Peter did.

You achieved an earlier success with ‘The Goonies’. Is there any chance of a sequel one day?
They’ll do it, for sure. No question about it. I think they would like to do it with all of us, and maybe they will, but they’re trying to crack the code you know? ‘Goonies’ is about how great it is to be kids, and we were so identifiable with it that audiences want to see us, so they’re trying to figure out how to do both. You can’t have ‘Goonies’ without kids, and yet they want to see us. They just want to crack the code and once they get there, they’ll make it. I’ll bet money that at some point it’ll get done.

Tell us about the new film ‘Demoted’.
Two days ago I was in the recording studio doing some of the post-production recording for it and it’s a ‘raunchy, couldn’t be any further away from Agent Oso’ kind of comedy, kind of like the (Judd) Apatow films about a couple of guys who are salesmen - rogues or rakes, or whatever you want to call them.

They take their boss out for a crazy night and the boss ends up dying with a smile on his face, so they are left wondering what’s going to happen. When a guy they pick on a lot in the office is promoted above them, he decides not to fire us but to demote us to secretaries. So we have to learn what it’s like, and we’re awful at it. We have to enlist the help of the secretaries to help us learn how to be good at it.

Finally, tell us about your upcoming film, ‘Stay Cool’.
Stay Cool is kind of like ‘Goonies’, except it’s sort of a homage to that time period. The main character, Henry, is a successful writer, and he has to give a commencement address at his high school. He goes home and his room hasn’t changed at all, his parents have kept it almost like a museum. I play a flamboyant hairdresser - Big Girl - who helps Henry along his journey.

Sorce:http://www.7days.ae

Recent Posts:

• Sitting pretty in your workplace
• Rockin’ all over Dubai
• Stars on cloud nine
• New Year, new you - but for how long?
• Mind your manners kids

Similar Posts:

• Disney’s Jesse is writing a new future
• Hat’s the way to do it
• Stars on cloud nine
• Mind your manners kids
• The girl from the slum