How you know D. B. Sweeney probably depends on whether your interests lie in the sports, TV or feature fihii arena. Maybe you've seen this amateur hockey player skate alongside fellow thespian athletes Jason Priestley and Denis Leary on the Celebrity All-Star Hockey Team. You might have been among the few who caught his underrated Fox series Strange Luck, or his recent, short-lived teaming with X-Files creator Chris Carter on Harsh Realm. Most likely, you'll remember him from the acclaimed mini-series Lonesome Dove (one of his personal favorites), the skating romance The Cutting Edge (another of his faves) or the UFO thriller Fire in the Sky.
You may remember his face, but you just might stumble when it comes to placing his name. But now, thanks to Wall Disney Pictures' Dinosaur, you'll also recall his voice. In this state-of-the-art CGI feature, Sweeney (the D.B. stands for Daniel Bernard) is the voice of Aladar. He's a young iguanadon thrown into the role of reluctant leader after a meteor destroys his island home and he is forced, along with his adopted family of lemurs, to join a herd of fellow reptiles in search of a safe new nesting ground.
It was in 1995 that Sweeney, who recalls auditioning — unsuccessfully — for "that animated bug movie [A Bug's Life]," was offered the role of Aladar. "I've been doing commercial voiceovers for quite some time, and I've really enjoyed it, so Dinosaur seemed like a logical extension of that, though it's very different because it's much more involved."
Cretaceous Characters
What he thought of first when he agreed to do Dinosaur, Sweeney says, were his nieces. "I knew it would be a lot of fun for my nieces, that they would really enjoy knowing their uncle was the voice of this big dinosaur. I also felt very secure [getting involved with the project], because the quality level of everything that Disney does, especially in the animation area, is so high. You know they're going to protect you and protect the integrity of the piece, and that it's going to be a very high-quality experience."
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