It seems remarkable that not only were you making your debut with such a complex film as "Monsters, Inc.", but you doubled the possible problems by making your leading lady three-years-old...

That's true. We started out recording Mary Gibbs, who was the daughter of one of our story guys, Rob Gibbs. She was about two and a half at the time. We brought her in and I thought we would work with her like we would any actor - we would stand her in front of a microphone and I would say words and she would repeat them back, but she really wasn't interested. She started running around and doing anything other than record, so eventually we picked up the microphone and followed her, so what you're hearing in the film are real sounds of a two and a half year old playing. We had soft toys and puppets, and to get her to sing this song I had a puppet. She wouldn't sing for me, but she would sing for the puppet.

How did you get Frank Oz [the voice of Miss Piggy and Yoda] on board to do a character?

Frank is a friend of mine and I've been a great admirer of his work, both film directing and performance, so it was really great he obliged us and did a small part in the film. He's such a wonderful guy, it was really a pleasure to work with him.

Did you ever worry about distressing the audience by showing children screaming?

Yes. You'll notice in the film that you don't see any children, until Boo comes in. We have this whole presentation of the idea that monsters make a living by scaring kids, but you never actually see a kid. They get to go in through a door, you hear a scream, they come out - it's very comical and handled in the right way.

Do the actors have much influence over the characters and story?

We always start with the story and we cast when the story is starting to tell us a lot about these characters. Then we go in and record. We find that the first couple of sessions are a big learning thing for us. We find that the strengths of this particular actor may be different from how we have our character, so we change the character. The characters become really written for these actors.