My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.

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.

Shooting this one was kind of like a two month party, we would literally play music between takes, and other movies that were shooting on our lot would play hookey, come over and hang out and stuff. We had a great time.

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

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.

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.

Oh, you know, driving around, coming to a stop sign and an entire family, from 8 to 80, will be looking at me with that Dr. Evil look – pinkie on the mouth.

My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.

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.

My parents would read those books to me as well but they used to make me starving when I was a kid because they were always eating ham sandwiches with the crusts off and drinking ginger beer.

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.

So they ended up turning this little twenty eight page book into the movie. And it’s all about this stinky, smelly ogre who doesn’t care what anybody thinks of him.

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

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

My Dad was from Liverpool, and he picked it up in the army. He’d often come out with this stuff.

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

I do miss Saturday Night Live, that’s for sure. There’s nothing like it. I just hosted, and I felt I’d only been away for a week.

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

Well, I like how people talk. I like language. You know, Linda Richman spoke in Yiddish.

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.

People ask me to record their answering machines all the time. I love it. It’s a miracle to me that people want to hear back those characters.

Verne’s all about what you can do versus what you can’t do. He just kept saying yes and his part kept growing. I would love to work with him in every movie.

I think that Scottish people, like Canadians, are often misunderstood and what I like about my Scottish friends and relatives is how quickly it can go from love to anger. It’s a great dynamic.

For me, everything definitely comes from music.

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 done Shrek as a Canadian and I’m very proud to be Canadian, but I knew I could give more to it.

I think when I have kids and grandchildren I will be very proud to have them watch this movie.

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

My dad loved to laugh. He was very funny and very silly.

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.