"Kitty Catherine Who?"

Christina Applegate is best known for her work in TV, as airhead Kelly Bundy on the sitcom Married…With Children, as well as Samantha Newly on the ABC sitcom Samantha Who? But Applegate has also done many films, including comedies like Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead, The Big Hit, The Sweetest Thing, and Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy.

Now the 38 year-old actress continues her voice work in the family film Cats & Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore. Christina gave us the 411 on her character.

“I play Catherine, who is the agent from Meows,” she describes, “She’s an incredibly sophisticated, smart agent – spy-like, if you will – and she begrudgingly has to be teamed up with these dogs in order for her to stop Kitty Galore, who is about to destroy her universe as well. I love her. I think she’s a really wonderful, rich cat.”

Applegate was also asked about whether she was a cat or dog person.

“I am a both-person,” Christina describes, “I love all the animals. All shapes, colors, sizes, and species.”

Christina described the process of doing voice work for the film, which she says was quickly revealed to her is not the easy payday it appears to be on the surface.

“It took me a minute to figure out exactly what was going on,” Applegate recalls, “My first session with them, I had worked on Samantha Who? until 9:00 in the morning and then I had to be there at 11:00, so I wasn’t in the best possible condition to start doing this kind of voice. But director Brad [Peyton] kept saying, “More energy, more energy.” I think, with a lot of other animated movies, they can animate thought in the eyes of the character and they can animate physicality and all of these things, but for this, these are real dogs and cats, with our characters, at least, there was very little that was enhanced.”

“So it really was a

"Kitty Catherine Who?"

cat sitting there,” she adds, “So what we really had to do is convey so much through the voice, and I think that’s when I finally understood when he said, “More energy.” It wasn’t ‘Louder, bigger’, it needed to be so full because that cat is not going to swerve this way or cock their head or do these things that you want it to do. So it took me a minute to get used to it and I think it turned out really well. I was happy with it. I’d like to go back and change a couple of things for myself, but I truly enjoy doing this kind of work. Even though it’s a little isolating, it’s quite gratifying to then finally see the picture and see what they’ve been so busy doing all these months and years.”

This film isn’t the first time Applegate has done voiceover work. Her previous voiceover roles include Farce Of The Penguins and Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. We asked her to compare doing the Chippette Brittany, which involved having to speed up her voice, and doing Catherine in this film in her normal voice.

“Very different,” she says of it, “Considering the Chippettes, I think it could be anybody. You really don’t recognize it because it’s just [high-pitched gibberish]. That’s a little bit more taxing, as far as doing the Chipmunks, because you have to talk a lot higher than you normally speak, and really slowly, and everything has to be incredibly exaggerated so you really feel ridiculous, and the process is a little bit longer to do that. Then they just speed it up and it doesn’t sound like you.”

“You try to put as much personality into that slow speaking so that when it speeds up, it sounds like something great, quirky and sassy,” Christina continues, “But with this, I found I didn’t want it to push too much because I think what’s great about these

"Kitty Catherine Who?"

movies is the human quality that all these animals have. That’s why kids love it, because they can just think, “Oh, this is really happening because there’s this human inside there. There’s this real person that I can relate to.” It took me a minute to really find what that was, to get Catherine as strong as she was but not make her unlikable as well.

Seeing how Cats & Dogs: The Revenge Of Kitty Galore is a child-centered film, Christina shared with us her favorite childhood toys growing up.

“I remember having all the dolls from El Coyote (a famous Mexican restaurant) in Los Angeles,” Applegate remembers, “I don’t know if they even have dolls anymore. I didn’t have Barbies, but I had hundreds of these Spanish dolls that were dressed like the waitresses there. I loved my little Conchitas. I had a few of them.

Applegate has not only managed to survive being a teen idol during her Married…With Children days and still having her career go strong, but she also managed to survive a tough bout with breast cancer in 2008 which required her to get a double mastectomy. She has been a longtime breast cancer advocate since her Married…With Children days when her mother battled it and survived.

“I actually have a foundation with EIF that we’re launching in, probably, September, called Right Action for Women,” Christina says, “And it’s a couple of things: one, it’s a program where we’re going to be giving financial aid to high-risk women who can’t afford to get MRIs, which is how I found my cancer. It’s unfortunate that insurance companies don’t cover the cost of that, and it’s such an incredible device because it can find it at a stage where you can stop it before it stops you, basically.”

“So that’s really been my mission, to stop that completely,” she adds, “We’ve already started our pilot program and we’re starting to help women already, even though we’re not

"Kitty Catherine Who?"

launched completely, so that’s one aspect of the foundation. The other is to do genetic counseling and really help women understand what being BRCA positive is, or having high-risk in their family, helping them understand what foods are good for their blood and how to prevent this disease from happening. So that’s been my mission, and that’s what I’m working on really hard right now.”