His current project is Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, a film for which Daily Radar had a chance to visit the set. When we met Reynolds, he shared information from his various film shoots, including Gladiator and Hannibal, but didn't take any crap from the likes of an entertainment correspondent.

Daily Radar: Were you ever teased as a kid for your name?

Sled Reynolds: Nah. No, I've been very lucky. I've spent all my life on a set. I'm 49, and I've virtually worked in the animal business almost all my life. My dad was in the business, so this is all I've ever done.

DR: So, how many crocodiles are you using in Crocodile Dundee in LA.?

Sled: This isn't about crocodiles. We actually had two lions, a chimpanzee, a Russian boar and a skunk, which is here today. The croc was actually done by the Australian guys, just before they got there.

DR: So what is Dundee's interaction with these animals?

Sled: There is a sequence where he actually hypnotized the lion. The chimp, he has a way of having it do a few things and you're not really sure why, but basically he projects his persona onto the animals throughout the movie and makes them manageable in situations that they normally wouldn't be controllable.

DR: Where does he encounter such creatures?

Sled: Well, it's contrived, obviously. When he's on a movie set, the lions happen to be out and they happen to turn up when the bad guys have got him between a rock and a hard place. It's actually a very cute scene in the movie, I think. He gets in the cage and the bad guys on the outside of the cage, so he's able to negotiate. The actor's incredibly funny, and the lion is sitting right behind the actor, so Dundee has all the leverage in the world because he's got the lion hypnotized and he's negotiating with the guy. It's a great scene in the movie.

DR: What other movies have you handled the animals for?

Sled: I just finished Hannibal, the sequel to Silence of the Lambs. Before that I had done Gladiator. Before that I did a movie in Namibia called Running Free, about horses. Before that I did a movie in Kenya called To Walk With Lions. We did The Patriot. I did Dances with Wolves, Out of Africa, Sheena, Mars Attacks, Sleepy Hollow.

DR: What animals will we see in Hannibal? Lambs?

Sled: No, actually, if you've read the book, there are the Russian boars. A guy named Mason Verger contrives this thing where he's going to actually have Hannibal killed and feed him to these Russian boars. So, he goes to Italy and trains these boars, actually teases them and teaches them to eat people. Then they capture Hannibal, and I can't give away the movie, but it's in the book.

DR: Are you using the same boars as in Crocodile Dundee?

Sled: Same boars, yeah.

DR: What exactly are Russian boars?

Sled: They're big hairy pigs. They have tusks about that long [extends hand out at arm's length to demonstrate.] Oddly enough, when I did Gladiator, Ridley [Scott] had a scene in the movie with a rhino but it was written out because it was too violent. There was a scene in the very first coliseum where a rhino comes in, and they're meant to fight it. We found a rhino that you could actually ride, and then we had a mean rhino that would charge you. A couple of us were going to double Russell and let it charge us and fight us. It would have been a spectacular scene in the movie, but Dreamworks has a problem with the fighting of animals.

So, I get a phone call from the producer, Branko Lustig, and he says, "You remember the rhino in Gladiator? Well, it went away. It now has hair and it's called a Russian boar." That was the joke because Ridley wanted the pigs to look Russian, so we went all over Canada and the world to find the biggest Russian boar we could find. The tallest one I had is 40 inches and weighs about 600 pounds.

DR: Do they really eat people?

Sled: They're omnivores, so they would eat a person under the right circumstances. I don't think they would hunt you down. They're not going to go out of their way, but what would happen, and this has been known for years on farms, if you have a whole bunch of pigs and throw a body in there, it's gone. If you have something that dies on the ranch and you need to get rid of it, feed it to the pigs. It honestly is a very, very clean way to take somebody out, so don't piss me off.

DR: Any interesting animals besides the boars in Hannibal?

Sled: Actually there are some pigeons in it, which I spent more time training than I did the boars.

DR: Why?

Sled: Why? It was just a weird scene where a pigeon follows the guy home, and pigeons are not very smart. I mean, they're right up there with journalists.

DR: I'd say something back, but you have those boars. Any more on Hannibal?

Sled: Oh, there were dogs. I think just dogs.

DR: What do we see them do in the movie?

Sled: The whole end of the movie is very interesting, but I'm not going to tell you about that. It's in the book. It's shot a little bit differently. Ridley has a weird slant on things.