Something's Fishy With Ellen

The new Disney animated film, "Finding Nemo," opens in theaters this weekend, featuring the voice of Ellen DeGeneres. It's just one of many projects the comedienne has on her plate this summer.

The Early Show correspondent Laurie Hibberd had a chance to talk to DeGeneres about her busy life.

In "Finding Nemo," DeGeneres plays Dory, a blue tang fish with short-term memory loss. It was a role written especially for her.

"The director, Andrew [Stanton], asked me if I would be a part of the film, and said he created this fish with me in mind," said DeGeneres. "He heard my voice and said, 'That's Dory.' And so it's the first time anyone came to me with a movie that they had created a character for me. And it turns out that it's a fish. So, that's flattering and frightening at the same time."

Animators sometimes take the person voicing the animated character into consideration to put life into the actors' cartoon counterpart.

"They film you and then your characteristics are in the fish," explained DeGeneres. "I have not seen it yet, but I hear I supposedly look a little like that [fish]."

The comedienne says she laughs when she sees her cartoon persona.

"We never see ourselves as we really are," she laughed. "And if that's what I look like, I just have to accept it."

Voice-over work can look a little weird to those unfamiliar with the procedure. Actors are put in a booth to say their lines, but they have to pretend they are in the scene, and, maybe, looking a little crazy doing it.

"I really just showed up and they said, 'You're going to speak whale.' And I was like,'OK, I guess I know what a whale sounds like,'" said DeGeneres. "And then they wanted to hear the words. So I just incorporated words in the whale. And it really does hurt your throat. It's hard, and on the DVD you actually see what I look like doing that. And it's not pretty. That's nothing compared to what I look like when I speak whale."

DeGeneres has had a long road back to the winner's circle. Five years ago, she announced she was gay and endured a public backlash. She says people misunderstood her reasons for coming out.

"It's not about my sexuality, it's got nothing to do with it," she said. "It's something that I didn't feel like holding onto any more. It's something I didn't feel like feeling ashamed about it. I just didn't want it to be a secret anymore. And it became a huge thing, and it became all that people talked about."

A decade later, DeGeneres is back on top and busier than ever. She is working on films, talk shows, an HBO special and a soon-to-be-released book.

"I'm an example that you shouldn't give up," said DeGeneres. "That no matter how bleak something looks, you shouldn't give up."

She said after her last HBO special, "The Beginning," three years ago, she stopped hearing the phone ring for work and wasn't being hired for anything.

"I just decided, 'This is crazy,"' she said. "I hadn't done stand-up in 8 years because I had had a television show. And when that got cancelled, I just thought I'd go back to how I started. I'll go back to the beginning.

DeGeneres said show business can be extremely hard, and she is grateful to be given another chance to perform.

"I just kept walking, I just kept moving. Or as Dory would say, 'I just kept swimming,'" laughed DeGeneres. "I just really feel like no matter what, you just keep going. And if you're doing something from a place of truth, it can't hurt you."

DeGeneres' HBO special airs June 21; her talk show debuts in September and her book hits the stores in the fall.