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Vin Diesel: Voicing Groot is ‘very challenging’

Vin Diesel finds voicing Groot in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ "very challenging".
The 49-year-old actor’s character in the Marvel Comics movie franchise is a tree-like humanoid named Groot who can only say "I am Groot", but the star still struggles with the voice acting for the role as the limited vocabulary makes it harder to properly convey emotion.
He said: "It’s very, very challenging because you’re limited to three words. There’s a secret script that I get where it has all of Groot’s lines, but the catch of it all is the only was I can say it is: ‘I am Groot.’"
And the star is set for an even bigger challenge in the upcoming second instalment of the franchise, as Groot – who was seen sacrificing himself at the end of the 2014 movie and re-growing into a miniature version of himself known as Baby Groot – will need a much higher voice to encapsulate his small size.
Vin told Total Film magazine: "I have a feeling they’ll do a combination of things [to alter the sound electronically]. I mean, I do it super high-pitched."
Meanwhile, the movie’s director James Gunn previously revealed he has "a lot more freedom" to develop the characters in the sequel.
He said: "On the second movie, I had a lot more freedom.
"Because the first movie did well and it was great not having to explain the five major characters to the audience in the first half hour, we just go straight into the story … This [the sequel] has to be its own thing and you can’t start making this a s****y Xerox of the first one."
‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’ – which is due to hit screens on April 28 in the UK and on May 5 in North America – also stars Chris Pratt as Star Lord Peter Quill, Bradley Cooper as the voice of Rocket, Zoe Saldana as Gamora, Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer, and Karen Gillan as Nebula, whilst newcomers Kurt Russell – who plays Quill’s father Ego – and Sylvester Stallone also join the cast.