By Subhash K Jha

Mumbai, May 31 (IANS) American icons Vanessa Williams and Jason Alexander have lent their voices for Nikhil Advani's animation film "Delhi Safari" and this is the first time Hollywood actors have done voiceover for an Indian movie.

Advani plays down the achievement, saying: "These names came into my picture because they believed in the theme, not because they had seen my films. Luckily, Vanessa and Jason hadn't seen my 'Chandni Chowk To China', ha ha."

Christopher Lloyd, American comic actress Jane Lynch, English actor Cary Elwes and American stand-up comedian Brad Garrett have also dubbed for "Delhi Safari", about the journey of four animals and birds from Mumbai to Delhi.

Hollywood and British cinema A-listers as a habit enjoy lending their voices to animation films in America and names like Vanessa and Jason came forward without any demands or fuss to be part of a film that espouses ecological equilibrium and animal welfare.

The voices for the animals in the Hindi version of "Delhi Safari" have been done by Akshaye Khanna, Govinda, Urmila Matondkar, Boman Irani, Suniel Shetty and Swini Khare.

In an interesting amalgamation of the East and West, Advani now intends to bring together the star-voices from the two versions of "Delhi Safari" to promote not just the film but also the much larger cause of nature's imbalance and how to rectify it.

"Yes, we have collaborative plans for the voices in English and Hindi because the voices are the stars of the film. And we need to stress how ecological imbalance is bringing earth to doom," he said.

"At the moment I'm not at liberty to talk about what we've planned. We had three screenings of the English-3D version of Delhi Safari at Cannes earlier this month. We're being inundated with requests from buyers from all across the world."