Patton Oswalt Talks 'Ratatouille' Role

Comic actor Patton Oswalt, who voices the lead character in Pixar's upcoming animated film Ratatouille, told SCI FI Wire that he and director Brad Bird bonded when Bird realized that Oswalt was obsessed with food and restaurants, just like the character.

"When we first met, we were talking about ... these different characters, and who am I going to be playing?" Oswalt said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco last March. "And then I revealed that I'm a big, big foodie. And ... because he had done all this research by going to ... Paris, they had visited all these great restaurants, I was like, 'Oh, my God. Did you go here, here and here?' I was naming off all these [places], because I follow chefs the way people follow rock stars. Like, especially celebrity chefs. He was like, 'Oh, my God. I didn't know any of [them].' ... I knew more about the food world than he did in a way, after all his research. So I think that really helped ... connect the dots for him. Like, 'Oh, this should be the rat.'"