Jim Carrey, known for his roles in films such as The Mask and Batman Forever, plays the lovable elephant Horton in Dr Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!

Carrey wasn’t at all nervous doing the film, because he knew he was in good hands.

“That’s the great thing about this, you’re surrounded by artists who are just as creative - or more so - than you are,” says Carrey. “I love being handled by nerds, it’s fantastic! Just to throw something out there and then have somebody put wings on it. It’s fantastic - it's a wonderful thing!”

Carrey decided to play Horton as an elephant who doesn’t realise he’s big and bulky. “He’s not bigger than anybody else, that's kind of where I wanted to come from with his character. Maybe it’s an inferiority complex, but he doesn’t feel like he’s bigger. He could do a lot of damage if he wanted to, but he doesn’t know he has that power - he feels equal to everybody.”

Carrey says kids are huge fans of the Horton Hears a Who! book. “It’s not necessarily because of the deeper concepts involved; it’s just the fact that Seuss’ creativity was so incredible - he was such an original. If you give a kid a character they’ve never seen before, in a world they've never seen before, they're able to completely lose themselves in an imaginary space and yet still get all these wonderful lessons. In my experience, I’ve always been drawn to anything different. I always felt odd as child, so with anything odd I thought: “Oh, those are my people. The Sneetches without stars, I dig those people.”

STEVE CARELL IS THE MAYOR OF WHOVILLE!

The Whoville mayor is “kind, generous and well-intentioned, with a lot of internal fortitude,” Carell, the star of such films as Get Smart and Little Miss Sunshine, says of his role in the animated hit. “He’s a guy just trying to do his best in a very difficult situation.”