Harry Connick Jr. has one thing on his mind sitting in a hotel suite overlooking the beach in Clearwater, Florida - and it’s not his new movie Dolphin Tale. “I love water and I love to fish,” he admits, “so with all due respect, it’s hard for me to sit here right now because I want to be out there!”

The 44-year-old actor more famous as a Grammy award-winning jazz musician is in town to visit his co-star, Winter the dolphin, who was rescued in 2005 by the Clearwater Marine Aquarium after he became tangled in a crab trap that led to his tail being amputated. Thanks to the aquarium’s devoted staff and a brilliant prosthetics engineer, Winter got a new tail that turned her into an inspiration for handicapped people all over the world and made her a star attraction at the Aquarium.

Now comes the film loosely based on those events, with Connick Jr. playing aquarium director Dr. Clay Haskett, Morgan Freeman as the prosthetics genius and 12-year-old Nathan Gamble as a boy who develops a special bond with the mammal.

“When I read the script I didn’t know it was a true story and I thought it was just a great story about perseverance and overcoming adversity,” Connick Jr. admits, his mind briefly back on the film. “But then I found out it was true and it made me even more interested in playing him, because there were so many experts that thought the dolphin should be euthanized and this guy really had to stick to what he believed against some tough odds.”

Newcomer Nathan Gamble - whose biggest role previously was playing Brad Pitt’s son in the drama Babel – was cast only after he met Winter, who played herself in the film so audiences could see exactly how the tail worked. “If Winter didn’t like him, we didn’t have a movie,” director Charles Martin Smith explains. “Winter is also 250 pounds and some twelve-year-old boys would be shy in the water with that, so we couldn’t have that either.”

Gamble says he was nervous about meeting his co-star but also surprised when he discovered how much time he would spend filming in the water with the real Winter. “I thought it was all going to be CGI,” he confesses. “I was also a terrible swimmer before this, so I had a lot of swimming lessons before we started filming and Winter must have known because she nudged me a lot when I was treading water and looked out for me too.”

Jenny Cooney was flown to Clearwater, Florida courtesy of Village Roadshow.

Movie: Dolphin Tale
Genre: family adventure
Buzz: High ratings from audiences and critics + US$71 million box-office gross.
Stars: Harry Connick Jr., Nathan Gamble, Morgan Freeman
Director: Charles Martin Smith
Rated: PG
Release: December 15