DELGO - My Love Hewitt - My Love Hewitt Websites

Jennifer Love Hewitt, who voices the lead female character in the upcoming animated fantasy film Delgo, told SCI FI Wire that the film doesn't have a release date yet, though she's been recording her part over the last couple of years. "Yeah, I have no idea when it's coming out," Hewitt said in an interview over the weekend. "I've been doing the voiceover part of that over, like, a two-year period, so I have no idea when it's coming out."

In the animated movie, Hewitt plays Kyla, a winged princess who is a member of a race warring with another, earthbound species of humanoid, but who finds herself falling in love with its scion, a young man named Delgo (voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr.).

"I kind of play this princess bug-fly-fairy thing [laughs]," Hewitt said. "I don't know what she is. I should have done more character work maybe [laughs]. But she has wings, and she's pretty, and it's kind of like Romeo and Juliet in the bug-fairy-insect world."

The official Delgo Web site said the movie is "an original tale set in a magical world combining action, humor and romance ... a fantasy adventure film featuring epic battles, devious traitors, bizarre monsters and thrilling aerial chases." It describes Kyla as "a spunky and beguiling princess with a big heart and bigger attitude. Feisty and daring, Kyla balances her mischievous spirit with charming optimism."

Created by Marc Adler and Jason Maurer and Atlanta-based Fathom Studios, Delgo's cast also includes Anne Bancroft, Val Kilmer, Lou Gossett Jr., Eric Idle and Burt Reynolds.

PRINCESS KYLA

MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN
as Elder Marley

Michael Clarke Duncan told SCI FI Wire that he enjoys doing voice-over work for animated features and video games and added that he recently completed two new projects, the upcoming fantasy film Delgo and the just-released direct-to-DVD film Dinotopia: Quest for the Ruby Sunstone.

"I love it, because you go into a room and spend maybe four hours in there, and you can let loose more than you can in front of a camera," the actor said in an interview while promoting his latest live-action film, The Island. "In front of a camera, you can see my emotions. Behind an [animated] character, you don't know what I'm doing. It's easier just to let go and be crazy and be wild, [to] calm it down a little bit or go over the top with it."

"Delgo" stars Freddie Prinze Jr. as the title character, a teen who must keep his world together when forces from within and afar threaten it. Other familiar names providing voices include Jennifer Love Hewitt, Val Kilmer, Louis Gossett Jr., Eric Idle, Burt Reynolds and the late Anne Bancroft. "I play the Elder Marley," Duncan said.

"And he's like Yoda. I take Delgo under my wing and teach him that we have these powers. We're warring against this other group, and I teach him that the warrior way is not always the right way to go, that you have to use your mind, you have to make friends. Delgo is very hotheaded, and he just wants to fight all the time." Duncan voices a dinosaur named Stinktooth in the Dinotopia film. "It was creatively very nice," the actor said. "You grow to just love doing voice-over work. It's so easy, and I have a voice-over agent at William Morris. Every other week he calls me, and he doesn't call me to say, 'I want you to do [an] audition.' He calls me, 'They want you; it's a job.' He always calls me with a job, ever since I've been with him. It's very good. Very lucrative, too."

Delgo will be released later this year; Dinotopia is in stores now.

NEW YORK, NY - Anne Bancroft, who won the 1962 best actress Oscar as the teacher of a young Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker" but achieved greater fame as the seductive Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate," has died. She was 73.

She died of uterine cancer on Monday at Mount Sinai Hospital, John Barlow, a spokesman for her husband, MEL BROOKS, said on Tuesday, June 7, 2005.

Bancroft was awarded the Tony for creating the role on Broadway of poor-sighted Annie Sullivan, the teacher of the deaf and blind Keller. She repeated her portrayal in the film version.

Yet despite her Academy Award and four other nominations, "The Graduate" overshadowed her other achievements.

(L to R) Actresses JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT, ANNE BANCROFT, and SIGOURNEY WEAVER in between takes of a 'bank scene' for the MGM 2001 hit "Heartbreakers".

Dustin Hoffman delivered the famous line when he realized his girlfriend's mother was coming on to him at her house: "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"

Bancroft complained to a 2003 interviewer: "I am quite surprised that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about `The Miracle Worker.' We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world. ... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet."

Mike Nichols, who directed "The Graduate," called Bancroft a masterful performer.

"Her combination of brains, humor, frankness and sense were unlike any other artist," Nichols said in a statement. "Her beauty was constantly shifting with her roles, and because she was a consummate actress she changed radically for every part."

Her beginnings in Hollywood were unimpressive. She was signed by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1952 and given the glamour treatment. She had been acting in television as Anne Marno (her real name: Anna Maria Louise Italiano), but it sounded too ethnic for movies. The studio gave her a choice of names; she picked Bancroft "because it sounded dignified."

After a series of B pictures, she escaped to Broadway in 1958 and won her first Tony opposite Henry Fonda in "Two for the Seesaw." The stage and movie versions of "The Miracle Worker" followed. Her other Academy nominations: "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964); "The Graduate" (1967); "The Turning Point" (1977); "Agnes of God" (1985).

Bancroft became known for her willingness to assume a variety of portrayals. She appeared as Winston Churchill's American mother in TV's "Young Winston"; as Golda Meir in "Golda" onstage; a gypsy woman in the film "Love Potion No. 9"; and a centenarian for the TV version of "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All."

After an unhappy three-year marriage to builder Martin May, Bancroft married comedian-director-producer Brooks in 1956. They met when she was rehearsing a musical number, "Married I Can Always Get," for the Perry Como television show, and a voice from offstage called: "I'm Mel Brooks."

In a 1984 interview she said she told her psychiatrist the next day: "Let's speed this process up — I've met the right man. See, I'd never had so much pleasure being with another human being. I wanted him to enjoy me too. It was that simple." A son, Maximilian, was born in 1972.

Bancroft appeared in three of Brooks' comedies: "Silent Movie," a remake of "To Be or Not to Be" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."

She also was the one who suggested that he make a stage musical of his movie "The Producers." She explained that when he was afraid of writing a full-blown musical, including the music, "I sent him to an analyst."

When Bancroft watched Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick rehearse "The Producers," she realized how much she had missed the theater. In 2002 she returned to Broadway for the first time since 1981, appearing in Edward Albee's "Occupant."

She was born September 17, 1931, in the Bronx to Italian immigrant parents. She recalled scrawling "I want to be an actress" on the back fence of her flat when she was 9. Her father derided her ambitions, saying, "Who are we to dream these dreams?" Her mother was the dreamer, encouraging her daughter in 1958 to enroll at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts.

Live television drama was flourishing in New York in the early 1950s, and Bancroft appeared in 50 shows in two years. "It was the greatest school that one could go to," she said in 1997. "You learn to be concentrated and focused."

In mid-career Bancroft attended the Actors Studio to heighten her understanding of the acting craft. Later she studied at the American Film Institution's Directing Workshop for Women at UCLA. In 1980 she directed a feature, "Fatso," starring Dom DeLuise. It received modest attention.

Among her notable portrayals: a potential suicide in "The Slender Thread"; Mary Magdalene in Franco Zeffirelli's miniseries "Jesus of Nazareth"; actress Madge Kindle in "The Elephant Man"; Anthony Hopkins' pen pal in "84 Charing Cross Road"; feminist U.S. senator in "G.I. Jane"; the Miss Havisham role in a modernized "Great Expectations."

In her final performance, Anne Bancroft joined a star-studded voice cast for Atlanta-based Fathom Studios in the first theatrical independent CGI production, "DELGO", coming soon. Bancroft voiced the character of Sedessa, an eccentric, vilianous leader who is as ambitious as she is charming. Her "Heartbreakers" co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt is also one of the stars of the movie.

Mr & Mrs. Brooks (1998)

Despite all her memorable performances, Bancroft was remembered most for Mrs. Robinson. In 2003 she admitted that nearly everyone discouraged her from undertaking the role "because it was all about sex with a younger man." She viewed the character as having unfulfilled dreams and having been relegated to a conventional life with a conventional husband.

She added: "Film critics said I gave a voice to the fear we all have: that we'll reach a certain point in our lives, look around and realize that all the things we said we'd do and become will never come to be — and that we're ordinary."

Story: © 2005 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
"Heartbreakers" Image: © 2001 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. All Rights Reserved.
"The Graduate" Images: © 1967 Embassy/Lawrence Turman - Copyright assigned to Parafrance Communication - a Paravision International Company. All Rights Reserved.
Hewitt, Bancroft & Weaver Image: Copyright Control. All Rights Reserved.
Delgo Images: © 2003 Electric Eye Entertainment Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
The Brooks and Anne Bancroft Image: Copyright Control. All Rights Reserved.

Directed by
Marc F. Adler
& Jason Mauer

Story by
Marc F. Adler
Jason Mauer
Scott Biear

Director of Photography
Herb Kossover

Screenplay by
Scott Biear
Patrick Cowan
Carl Dream
Jennifer A. Jones
Jason Mauer

Produced by
Marc Adler

Animation Director
Warren Grubb

Associate Producer
Jennifer A. Jones

Made by
Fathom Studios
& Electric Eye
Entertainment Corporation

ANNE BANCROFT as Sedessa	MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN as Elder Marley	LOUIS GOSSETT JR. as King Zahn

JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT as Princess Kyla	ERIC IDLE as Spig	CHRIS KATTAN as Filo

SALLY KELLERMAN as the Narrator	VAL KILMER as Bogardus	MALCOLM McDOWELL as Raius