Turning That Frown Upside Down

Kodi-Smit McPhee knows he's regarded as “that kid who does those really depressing movies”. That's what comes from a body of work that includes brilliant but downbeat films like The Road and Let Me In, the American remake of the Swedish horror masterpiece Let the Right One In. But at the tender age of 16, the Australian actor is looking to display his versatility.

Portraying a shy kid with the ability to talk to dead people may not automatically seem like a step in that direction. But voicing the title character in ParaNorman, a new animated horror-comedy from production company Laika, the people behind the offbeat animation hit Coraline, does allow Smit-McPhee the opportunity to lighten up a little. For all the laughs in ParaNorman – which could be called the best Tim Burton movie Tim Burton never made – there's a surprising amount of heart and soul in the story of Norman, whose extraordinary ability makes him the only one who can save his hometown when the dead begin rising from their graves.

“The first time I read it, I was like, 'Is that really what I think I read?'” says Smit-McPhee. “I read it again and again and again, and I was amazed. You can watch it and take it as just a fun kind of ride but as you go deeper into it there's a bunch of stuff in there, whether it's about bullying or about staying true to yourself or a lot of other things. And they didn't push it too much or make it too obvious. It's all there for you to find. You go in expecting a kids' film and come out realising there was a lot in there for adults as well. It's a very emotional film, very deep.”

For all the emotion of the end product, though, Smit-McPhee says he and his fellow cast members (including Casey Affleck, Pitch Perfect's Anna Kendrick and Superbad's Christopher Mintz-Plasse) had a ball putting the film together, even as the production period stretched over two years for Smit-McPhee. “It was something that became really close to me,” he says. “I auditioned in Australia without knowing a whole lot about it. I put down my audition on tape and sent it off and when I found out I got the job I also found it was the people who did Coraline, which was one of my favourite animations ever. Reading the entire script, the whole thing just hit me.

“And I believe being with it longer gets you closer to the character; you start filling in more and more spaces and it becomes a lot easier. You can add things to your performance, change it up a little bit, and it felt like that in this case. With animation it can sometimes feel that there's only so much you can do with your performance but this was a lot of fun. I may have shown up for work a couple of times in my pyjamas.”

Clearly Smit-McPhee had some form of kinship with Norman from the very beginning, though. Upon landing the role, he decided to sketch what he thought the character would look like. After an initial version that sported dreadlocks, he came up with his final version. “And when the guys at Laika showed me their prototype sketches of Norman, it was almost exactly the same,” he laughs. “It was very cool.”