Burrell takes his chances

Finding Dory tells us that some of the best things happen by chance. Ty Burrell, who voices beluga whale Bailey, says the best unplanned thing to happen in his life was adopting his two daughters. Hannah McKee meets the Modern Family star.

Ajourney Ty Burrell will never forget is the drive from one side of the United States to the other. It’s a 4000-kilometre trip he’s made a number of times.

When Burrell was studying a postgraduate degree in Pennsylvania, he would drive home to Oregon at the end of the school year in his Toyota van.

His quickest run took five days. The longest was a month, when his van broke down and he had to spend a week in Montana waiting for repairs.

He would sleep in his van between 14-hour bouts on the road.

‘‘There’s just something about it, an incredible array of land that changes, every day it looks totally different, the towns are different, and there’s a bunch of weird stuff in Middle America, which is also pretty great,’’ the Emmy Award winner says.

In Burrell’s latest film, Finding Dory, a little blue fish goes on an incredible adventure across the ocean in search of her parents.

Burrell is widely known for his portrayal of clumsy father Phil Dunphy in the mega hit sitcom Modern Family.

But the 48-year-old is just as comfortable in the recording booth, having lent his voice to a genius dog in the 2014 children’s movie, Mr Peabody and Sherman, the upcoming Storks, and most recently, playing a neurotic beluga whale in Finding Dory. For Burrell, one of the appealing things about doing kids’ movies is to impress two of his biggest critics, his daughters, aged 4 and 6. It was with them that he fell in love with the film’s predecessor, Finding Nemo. He only had to hear the word ‘‘Pixar’’ to agree to Finding Dory, well before his agent had time to actually tell him anything about the character. ‘‘I’m just such a fan of Pixar, and there’s also a practical side to doing animated film too, which is that it’s not a crazy demand on your schedule, so you can actually be with your family a little bit more.’’ Burrell’s character, Bailey, is a beluga whale who resides at the Marine Life Institute because he believes his sonar is defunct. ‘‘But actually, it’s just because he’s neurotic, so it’s not a stretch for me,’’ Burrell says. Aside from feeling like a whale after Thanksgiving dinner, Burrell says he actually relates to this character even more than he does to Phil Dunphy.

‘‘I’m absolutely prone to idiocy, like Phil, but Bailey’s sort of neurotic and he’s got self doubt, and I relate to that a little bit more.’’

Burrell has never seen a beluga whale in the flesh, but he did try to do some research to prepare for the role.

‘‘I very foolishly researched beluga whales, as in, I Googled ‘beluga whales’, and realised immediately that it had no bearing. I mean, it was kind of cool to learn a little bit about them, but it didn’t actually help at all.’’

Due to the species’ large heads, he initially played around with a congested-sounding voice, but director Andrew Stanton kindly suggested Burrell just do his own voice.

The sound booth is a place where you have to get used to looking really, really foolish, Burrell says.

‘‘It’s not really the same as if you’re doing a scene with other people and there’s a camera on you, you can convey so much more without having to really use your voice at all.

‘‘But because it’s all your voice, it’s super specific and sometimes your body goes in weird places trying to get that note.’’

It took Burrell about 10, fourhour sessions to record Bailey – nothing, he says, compared to the years of work the writers and animators put into the films.

‘‘They’re working incredibly hard for a long time. As usual, we [actors] get patted on the back and take credit for other people’s work.’’

Burrell’s daughters know it’s their dad doing the voice, but they don’t fully understand that he did not make the movie.

‘‘So they basically spent the whole movie blaming me for everything that Bailey did wrong, they’d just constantly turn to me during the screening like, ‘Come on, dad! Just, please, tell her where the wall is already!’ ’’

Finding Dory has a message that some of the best things in life happen by chance.

Dory says to her cantankerous octopus companion Hank in the film, ‘‘What is so great about plans? I’ve never had a plan.’’

For Burrell, the best unplanned things to ever happen were meeting his wife, and adopting his two daughters, which he understands might sound strange, since they were adopted.

‘‘In a in a weird way, it wasn’t planned, it’s a weird thing how adoptions can sometimes be as irrational as regular birth.

‘‘My wife Holly and I were on an airplane on a flight from LA to New York and when we got on the flight we had intended to never have kids.

‘‘When we got off in New York, we were crying that we were going to have a kid, so it was unplanned. And then, when we did it again, it was similarly irrational.’’

What resonated with Burrell about the story in Finding Dory, is how friendship can make you feel whole.

‘‘You can kind of dwell on your imperfections and feel limited about what you can achieve, based on what you know to be your weaknesses.

‘‘Which is true, I certainly feel that way, and think a lot of people do. But I loved the idea that your friends can make you feel whole, can actually compensate for your weaknesses, and you can do that for them too.’’

There’s a saying that has caught on in Burrell’s household.

It might not make the same splash as ‘‘Just Keep Swimming’’, but it’s a message his girls are reminded of before they leave the house – ‘‘Do your best, be kind, and have fun’’. cinemas. (G) is now in New Zealand