Guillermo del Toro hired Pinocchio star Gregory Mann just in time as his voice broke shortly after he recorded his part.
Guillermo del Toro says the star of his new film Pinocchio sounds like Barry White after his voice broke
The moviemaker has revived the classic story for a new stop-motion animated film which features Mann voicing the puppet who longed to be a real boy - and the director has admitted the casting came at the perfect moment as the youngster soon lost the angelic tones that won him the part.
Speaking on 'The Jess Cagle Podcast with Julia Cunningham' podcast, del Toro explained: "The voice has that unaffected empathy ... I mean it's heartbreaking how pure the voice of Gregory is... once. Now he sounds like Barry White.
"He really has that deep basso profundo now ... We caught him around age 10 before his teens."
The Oscar-winner went on to reveal how he got such a powerful performance from you Gregory, saying: "He came in and what we did was try to put him in the moment we had his father or mother there in case he needed to get emotional ... whenever I needed him to be insolent I would ask him to punch me in the belly and call me dummy ... "
Gregory - who is now 14 - has since opened up about his changing voice. Speaking at Netflix's Tudum fan event, he said: "My voice has got a whole octave deeper.
"I don’t think I can even speak that high [anymore]. I tried to do the voice and my voice ended up cracking."
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