What are your connections with Malta?

I'm the first generation on the Maltese side of my family born in America. My grandfather, Carmel Gatt was a Distinguished Service Medal recipient, on the Boxol as a signal man and captain for the British Merchant Marines. He lived in Marsa where my mother Agnes Gatt (later Agnes Balda) was born. After the war my grandfather moved the family to Detroit where he and all my uncles worked for Ford motors.

Do you have any recollections or memories related to your Maltese family and to Malta?

So many! I'm very close with my Maltese family and our giant family gatherings eating pastizzi and qassatat. I love my family accent and wish I learnt Malti when I was younger. But it was a different generation then and my family wanted us to learn American English. When my mum died, I was 23 and I made a pilgrimage to see Malta for the first time. I stayed at a youth hostel in Paola and immediately dropped my bags to go exploring. Would you believe that without even looking at a map I walked directly to my mother's church, the Trinity in Marsa? It was like I knew my way. I come back to Malta whenever I can. It's a beautiful country and I feel so proud to be part of it!

Have you always wanted  to work in the film industry?

When I was younger I loved movies and I loved to draw. I used to come home after watching a Disney movie and try to make a comic book of the film so that I could have a souvenir of the movie. This is before DVD (even video tapes!) so it was my only way to be able to "watch" the movie again. But movies seemed so magical and there was no industry where I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. So I didn't really think of it as a career. Then I had a very fortunate meeting with Dan Jeup who was an animator on The Little Mermaid. This changed my life because he mentored me and told me what I needed to do to take my drawing into the path of animator. After that I was accepted at Calarts (California Institute of the Arts) where I studied character animation.

Are you travelling a lot between Los Angeles and Paris? Due to the nature of your work are you obliged to also travel to other cities?

We make the movies here in Paris but most of the voice recordings take place in LA. So I am travelling back there very often, every couple of months at least. Typically it's just the back and forth between LA and Paris but we premiered the movie in London this June which was super exciting considering how important London was as a location in the movie.

Have you ever thought that Minions would have this astounding success? What inspired you when you and your colleagues were creating the famous yellow animated characters?

None of us imagined that the minions would be so ubiquitous. For the original Despicable Me movie (where I worked as head of layout and cinematography) the minions were developed as a bunch of big muscled henchmen. But this would have been very expensive to make a Lord of the Rings style army of henchmen. And ultimately it wouldn't have been so funny! So Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, who co-directed the first film, worked with designer Eric Guillon to come up with the very iconic design of the minions that we know today. For the film Minions that Pierre Coffin and I directed together, our main challenge was to try to differentiate Kevin, Stuart and Bob as separate characters from the tribe. So for the first time we have distinct personalities that I think help the audience relate to a little more closely.