How to Train Your Dragon: Discovering Your Strengths

From DreamWorks Animation, the same studio that brought you Shrek, Madagascar and Kung Fu Panda, comes the brand new 3-D animated feature, How to Train Your Dragon. Directed by master animators, Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, the film tells the tale of an awkward teenager named Hiccup who doesn’t exactly fit in with his fellow Viking friends. Youthink recently got the chance to catch up with Jay Baruchel, the 27-year-old Canadian actor who voices Hiccup, to talk about his first voice-over role and to find out more about How to Train Your Dragon.

YT: You have played a number of quirky characters in your career, Hiccup included. What is it about these types of characters that appeals to you?
JB: I guess maybe ’cause I’m a weirdo? (laughs) Yeah, I mean, I was just always kind of an oddball. This is not to say that I walked around with tinfoil on my head, covering myself in cat food or something. I was just wired differently, you know, and so I suppose I respond to playing characters that are wired differently as well.

YT: Hiccup is an unlikely hero. Do you and Hiccup have any common traits?
JB: Well, yeah. We’re both incredibly skinny and have fairly girly-like bodies. Actually, I think the trait I have in common with Hiccup the most would be that he really loves this dragon and has a really, really close relationship that only a kid and their animal can have, you know? Any animal. For me, it’s my cat. I grew up surrounded by cats and there’s one that I rescued that lives with me and she’s my favourite. So, there are plenty of times in the movie where I found myself – a full-grown 27-year-old male – going, “Aaww!” just because the dragon looked like my cat sometimes.

YT: How does voice-over differ from screen acting?
JB: It doesn’t start as early in the morning! I don’t have to put on any makeup or shave; I got to just roll in there looking however I looked – sometimes in pajama pants. And also, I think it takes way longer. Like, I started working on How To Train Your Dragon as I was doing the movie Tropic Thunder. [Tropic Thunder] already came out [in August 2008]. So, that’s another big difference.

YT: What was it like working with fellow castmates such as Gerard Butler and America Ferrera?
JB: Oh, man, it was awesome. Actually that’s another weird thing about doing voice recording – most of it I do by myself. We all do it by ourselves in isolation, but a few times I was lucky enough to get to be in the studio, recording with them at the same time. Gerard’s a real good actor. I’m a big fan of his movies, actually. He’s worked a lot in Canada and has a great affection for Canada, so he and I got along real well. And America’s awesome and you know, Jonah [Hill] and Christopher Mintz-Plasse I knew from another movie I did called She’s Out of My League. It was really fun and I got to laugh a lot.

YT: What message can teens take from this story?
JB: To me, the whole point of the movie is that just because you’re in a certain position socially in your life, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s always going to be that way. In fact, most likely, it won’t be that way. And I know, ’cause I know for me high school was often a difficult time and sometimes in high school you feel like it could last forever, but it gets better. It seems so far away, but I can promise you that all the things that when you’re young you believe are your sort of “failings,” all the things – your weaknesses – are actually your strengths. And that’s what the movie’s about.

How to Train Your Dragon review!