Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour.

I have very happy memories of fairy tales. My mother used to take me to the library in Toronto to check out the fairy tales. And she was an actress, so she used to act out for me the different characters in all these fairy tales.

I had a blast, but I still wonder sometimes why they saw me as the perfect guy for this strange character.

For me, everything definitely comes from music.

Europe to me is young people trying to appear middle-aged and middle-aged people trying to appear young.

Europe is weird songs that would never make it in America.

Europe is scooters. Europe is five young people on one bench sharing a chocolate bar. Their idea of entertainment and fun is so much different than ours, which is exactly why a movie about them would be funny.

I loved the logistical reality of a guy who wants to take over the world, yet who has a family too.

Comedy. It was just huge in my house. Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness, Monty Python and all those James Bond movies were highly regarded.

Austin sounds a little bit like Aston Martin, which is the type of car James Bond would drive.

And I thought, when I have kids, that's the sort of well told, silly, and fun fairy tale that I would want to take them to. But it was an amazing experience. And I think Shrek is a real classic, a fairy tale classic.

And I love Mel Brooks. My Dad loved his movies, too, they're awesome, the kind of thing that if you're in for ten minutes, you're in for two hours.

Dr. Evil got shortchanged in the first one. The family dynamic between Scott and Dr. Evil - the adventures of being an evil single parent - needed to be explored.

The message of the movie is to accept who you are and not to succumb to the pressure of what the media tells you is beautiful and what you should be looking like.

When you're writing these things, you're in a room making each other laugh, you really have very little sense of political correctness or incorrectness. This is a question that Europe tends to ask and America doesn't.