After a slew of B movies, Uggie’s next film was 2011’s Water for Elephants from director Francis Lawrence, Uggie’s biggest picture to date, despite the tepid response from rube critics. The film boasted two Oscar winners, Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz, and also starred heartthrob Robert Pattinson, in his first major post-Twilight role.
RPattz was no stranger to off-screen romances with his co-stars and apparently neither was Uggie, who claims to have romanced Miss W in between her breakup with Jake Gyllenhaal and marriage to Jim Toth.
“What I didn’t expect was for it to happen to me,” says Uggie in his autobiography. “At the ripe old age of 56 in human years, I had fallen in love for the first time, and with a human woman more than 20 years my junior. And boy, did I fall.”
But while Uggie steals some scenes in the film, it’s another animal who runs away with the movie. Although the story surrounding her, in and out of the film, is one of the reasons why animal actors are nearly going extinct today.
Did Uggie’s performance as Queenie break ground for Jared Leto’s Oscar-winning performance just two years later? What is Christoph Waltz’s accent in this film? Did Reese break up with Jake for Uggie?
All this and more in Episode 6 of the Consider Uggie podcast, where my Awards Daily colleague Joey Moser and I, Megan McLachlan, discuss the filmography of Uggie the dog and his impact on popular culture.