Hewitt 'Parties' With a Fat Cat
The cartoon cat Garfield has entertained readers of funnies for years. Now, the orange fat cat takes his act to the big screen in his first movie, "Garfield."
In the movie, Jennifer Love Hewitt plays beautiful veterinarian Liz Wilson, who, unknowingly, changes Garfield's life with a gift to owner Jon (Breckin Meyer) – Odie, a dim-witted dog that's the exact opposite of the wise-cracking cat.
Garfield, who is voiced by actor Bill Murray, uses some slick moves to get rid of Odie. But, the cat finds his heart, and he tries to retrieve the dog from some unscrupulous characters.
Hewitt describes Murray's portrayal of the cat as "amazing." She tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm, "The crew felt like we did one movie and the animators went off and did another movie with Bill Murray and put the two together."
Having grow up listening to her mom reading the comic strip in the Sunday paper, Hewitt says, "Garfield is like everybody's grandfather, in a way. He feels very human." As a kid she had a fat orange cat and even tried to feed him lasagna for the first time, because that is Garfield's favorite dish.
Besides Garfield, the film used 35 dogs of different breeds, plus 15 or so cats and about 30 rats, all real.
"I would not go on the set when there were rats. I couldn't do it," Hewitt says, but notes that working with the other animals was quite a wonderful experience.
She says, "I have to say the dogs were incredible to watch. Like they're some of the best actors I've ever seen. These dogs all day they'd hit their marks and have facial expression."
All the animals were very well behaved, she notes. "You hear sometimes on movies that animals were not treated well. On our film, these animals were so loved and cared for and pampered and treated as real, like, stars of the film. I mean, it is their film and we were just sort of -- it's their world and we lived in it, really. But it was great. It was so fun. I would totally do it again."
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