ParaNorman: Anna Kendrick

Anna Kendrick (“Camp,” “Up in the Air”) plays Norman’s teenage sister in “ParaNorman.” She ends up going along with him on a wild zombie-hunting adventure. At Comic-Con, she talked about making the film, and when asked about her favorite prop, she pulled out her cell phone to show us a picture of it.  Norman’s friend Neil is mourning the loss of his dog, and in his locker there is a memorial note with a paw print.  It says, “Bub is great, understands me, barks at bullies.”  She says it still makes her tear up to look at it.

She visited the set after the movie was completed and was amazed by “All the details you don’t really see in the movie,” how meticulous and careful every part of every scene was designed to be.   She loved playing the exasperated teenager.  “I can tap into my inner obnoxious person and it is so fun to play somebody so annoying and do that voice.  I liked all the vocalization and exasperated sighs.”  Like Kodi, she enjoyed the chance to be very exaggeratedly physical in the voice recording sessions without worrying about how she looked.  “It was really freeing to not be worried about how idiotic you look.”  She and Casey Affleck were together on what was the first voice acting experience for both of them.  She appreciated the chance to learn with him, “and by the end of the day we were in a competition to see who could make a greater fool of themselves.”  But she joked that working with Kodi “made me feel worse about being Courtney” because it was harder to be mean to him.