What's your number one vacation spot?
J: Australia. I'm not sure why because I've never been there but I'm told that's the place I'd love. I like warm places. I like warmth, warmth is good. I grew up in Canada in sub-zero temperatures so I started rebelling against that very early. I started wearing summer clothing during the dead of winter, slopping through slush puddles in Converse All Stars.
What's your number one travel tip since you travel so much?
J: Carry as much cash as you possibly can where ever you go. Yep, loose cash coming out of your pockets and look up at the buildings a lot, look as vulnerable as possible.
What do you never leave home without?
J: Well we're not going to get into that are we? I call it my carry-on. Sometimes I have to check it, but I don't mean to brag.
This is a G-rated show
J: Oh, is it? I'm sorry
What's your ultimate travel destination — somewhere you've never been but always wanted to go?
J: I want to go to Richard Branson's Island. That's where I want to go ... to that Shangri-La Island he owns that I've heard about. I'd like to go there. I've done a lot of travelling and I love historical places. I went to Mount Sinai about a year or so ago and I went to the Holy Land and that was an incredible trip. We hung out by the River Jordan and got baptised and the whole thing, it was great.
What was the best thing about making Horton Hears a Who for you?
J: Well, I think just being apart of the Dr Seuss legacy in any way is so fantastic because he's so rock 'n' roll to me. I mean he's the kid's version of punk, you know. That's as crazy and alternative as you get, and to introduce that to another generation... Also having done the Grinch, to be asked to do a character that's so world's apart from the attitude of the Grinch, I mean Horton is a complete non-ego innocent, you know, who loves the world and everything. Even his enemies he sees the good in and so it was such a stretch. It was great to be able to do that. I just think Dr Seuss is one of the great creative forces that's ever been and it will never get old and it will never get unhip.
I bet you never thought you'd play an elephant?
J: Yeah that's the thing. I'm cast to play this elephant and, you know, free to spread my droppings where ever I wanted to. It was fantastic. It was really real. There was a guy with a shovel who used to follow me around on the set of 20th Century Fox and it was a wonderful experience. But I finally got them compacted into real neat little balls, but I went crazy, went on a rampage one day through the studio which was very hard to control. No I'm cast as this elephant, and I thought to myself 'how am I going to be this big elephant?' But the fact is Horton doesn't think he's bigger than anybody. He has a kind of small child-like attitude.
