What do you believe about true love?
I think there is a true love, a connection you find with someone.  I don’t necessarily think it’s ‘happy ever after.’  It’s just a [heck of a] lot of work.  I’ve been married for almost nine years now and I find that the more we work through our issues individually, the more we grow as a couple.  As our family grows we grow closer together and our lives are improving.  I think it comes with a tremendous amount of work and understanding and sacrifice.  And it transforms you, certainly.  I’m a much better person because of my wife and my children.

Did you know right away?
No, because I had been married before, obviously, in a very interesting marriage that I learned a lot from.  But it prepared me for this one.  It was really valuable experience.

Early in the movie, when Robert finally decides to let Giselle spend the night, he tells his daughter to come into his room.  Was that to protect his reputation [from his girlfriend] or was he protecting his daughter from a potentially crazy person?
That’s the choice I made.  I never really thought he was thinking in terms of sexuality at that point.  The thing I had a hard time with—and it’s a Disney movie, and Amy Adams, so you believe it—was that you would never bring her home.  You just would not do that!  We kept laughing about that.  If it wasn’t Disney, you’d have a hard time with the believability of it.

One of the difficult things with your part is that you were responsible for making the audience accept this crazy, animated princess in real life, to the point where you could believe that someone would fall in love with her in the real world.  How difficult was it for you to make the transition from, “I’m meeting this nutcase who is knocking on the door of a billboard” into falling in love with her?
It was a real challenge.  From day one, I was thrown off.  How do you make this believable?  How do you react to it honestly?  I would go home and be completely depressed because, ‘Am I making this movie work?’  I was like, ‘Please just get me back to Grey’s Anatomy and let me fight with Meredith.  I never felt completely comfortable or solid in the role.  It always made me feel completely unstable and completely insecure.  Amy had her issues, and we would talk to each other and walk each other through these things.  You know, when the birds come in.  Is it big enough?  Or is it too big?  It was trying to keep his pain and keep the honesty of that situation, as well as allowing yourself to get caught up in the magic of her, and to find those moments.

Was there a transition moment?
I think the restaurant is the transition moment, when she touches his chest and he goes in and sits down.  That’s when he falls in love with her.