You could probably always say that Jack Black characters are "animated," but that's literally true for the first time with the recent release Kung Fu Panda, a DreamWorks feature starring Black as Po, a panda with Kung Fu dreams. Recently, he dished to reporters about working with animation and how he sees a little bit of Po the Panda inside himself.

On his relationship to his character, Po:
"There’s a lot of me in there. I can relate to a lot of Po’s dreaming of being a Kung Fu master and being world famous. I had dreams similar to that when I was a kid, you know? Wanting to be a comedian, actor, and his insecurities of not having the right body for Kung Fu.  I’ve had my issues too, so I think it was tailor-made for me.

On trying to make in Hollywood as a less-than-typical leading man:
"Actually my parents were very supportive. They never told me that it was a pipe dream to do what I wanted to do, but when you look around at the other people who are in the industry, it’s just very a looks-driven thing for the most part. So there is...it can make you insecure if you’re measuring yourself up against the other hunks of the trade. 

On how he enjoyed working on an animated movie:
Yeah, I had tremendous fun making this, and you've got to understand it’s spread out pretty thinly over many years, like 3 or 4 years. [I've] been working on this, and I just go in like once a month and do a few hours of voice work, so it never felt like, "Oh man this is a lot of work, this is hard work." It’s very easy in terms of, yeah, just going in and doing the job was always a joy.

On working with Dustin Hoffman (who voices Shifu, Po's mentor, in the film):
No, I would have been too nervous to say, "I demand to work with Dustin Hoffman." I wouldn’t presume to control his schedule, but I was thrilled that it worked out because he’s been a hero of mine. He is the master, the true master of acting. 

We were always encouraged to improvise, but you always get what’s on the page first. And we did, we remained faithful to the text, and he had some good tips for me.  There was this one line, I can’t remember which one, but it was like, he took me aside and said, "I think that one line might be better if you just whisper it, just make it as small as possible." I was like, "Okay, I’ll try that."  And it felt really good. Yeah, so it was cool to share the spotlight with him for a moment.

On Kung Fu movies:
Yeah, when I was a kid I loved Bruce Lee along with everybody else, and Jackie Chan, and I love Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon a lot.  But my favorite is Steven Chow. [He] has a couple films that really blew my mind. Chow Lin Soccer, just incredibly funny and entertaining action sequences, and I think and hope that we’ve captured a lot of that spirit and magic of Kung Fu films at their best, yeah.