It was 20 years ago that Finding Nemo won the hearts of viewers from all over. Good Morning America shared an interview with Alexander Gould, who voiced the titular character in Pixar's Finding Nemo when he was only nine years old.
What He’s Saying:
If you ask Gould why the film has stood the test of time, he has a theory.
- "It just has so many beautiful themes," he told Good Morning America. "I think that's probably why it was such a cultural phenomenon at the time. It just spoke so deeply to everybody who watched it."
- "You pick up all the good messages of having faith in yourself, trusting yourself, being able to overcome obstacles in your own life. Things that might seemingly hold you back don't actually hold you back," he added. "For parents, it has great themes around letting go and pushing your kids into the world and letting them thrive by their own merit."
The film came out when you were just 9 years old. What do you remember about that time?
- It was a very exciting time. It was kind of a whirlwind. I started working on the film when I was 6 years old, and so it was three years of recording in the studio, going back and forth to Pixar in San Francisco and going to Disney in Los Angeles.
- And finally, after many, many months and years of collaborating and working on the film, it kind of all came to fruition and then there was a lot of big media attention, and there was premiere and it was very fun.
- I kind of was in the Disney crowd at the time, which was exciting. It was a really fun time.
Do you have any fond memories from your time recording your lines as Nemo?
- The fondest memories I have were with the director, Andrew Stanton. He was amazing and so dynamic.
- I was a kid, and he was really good at working with me, getting me excited about what was going on in the scene and pulling out the best performance possible from from what I was doing.
- We had a lot of fun in the studio. We used to have these big cue cards … and he played a game where, whenever we finished one of the pages, I'd take the cardboard card and throw it across the room, the big recording studio up at Pixar.
When people in your personal life find out you voiced Nemo, what is their first reaction?
- People ask me to do the voice and then I have to explain that I was, you know, 9 years old and my voice has changed a little bit since then.
- [Laughs] I usually get a lot of questions about what it was like and have people quoting the movie to me. It's a really, really amazing thing to be a part of such like a pivotal piece of film, of animation.
- I have a bunch of nieces and nephews, and I just got to rewatch it with all of them, and they had a blast.
- They're quoting the movie to me and asking me questions about filming it while they're watching, which is very fun.
Is the reason you didn't return for the sequel Finding Dory because you got older and your voice changed?
- Yeah, that was 100% the reason. When Finding Dory came out I was I think 20 or 21. [Gould was 22 at the time of the sequel's release.]
- After the filming of Finding Nemo I still did the voice … until I was about 14. Around that time I was told that, unfortunately, my voice had changed too much.
- I wasn't able to capture the essence of Nemo anymore. That happens when you're a child actor.
- So they brought in someone new [Hayden Rolence] who was able to capture the essence that I had in the original film, and he did a really fantastic job doing that.
- I came back and did a small little cameo [in Finding Dory].