I had to go to the office to take a breath, but someone had put up my favourite picture of her on the wall.

If you saw the movie first, you would expect a heartwarming story all about love and loss, with a strong central story pulling it all together. He is soon befriended by Kelly's 13-year-old homeschooled cousin, Lily, who develops a crush on him.In August 2011, it was announced that Icelandic musician JónÞór"Jónsi"Birgisson, the lead singer of the band SigurRós, would be composing the music scores for We Bought a Zoo.

My mum, 76 at the time, sold the family home, and moved into the broken down manor house at the centre of the zoo with my brother Duncan, me, my wife Katherine and our two small children. We didn't get a lot of money from the film but we did get a lot of attention and that was the main motivation for doing it. We stayed in a five-star hotel, met a lot of Hollywood A-listers and appeared on talk shows - it was surreal but the kids loved it.His extraordinary will and determination to succeed meant they passed, and on July 7 they opened to the public as the rebranded Dartmoor Zoological Park, with signs that Katherine had designed. Scarlett Johansson as Kelly Foster, the 28-year-old lead long-time zookeeper at Rosemoor Animal Park who is Benjamin's love interest and is a mother figure to Dylan and Rosie. The kids and I went to Hollywood to play visitors to the zoo in the film - I wore a Dartmoor Zoo hat in the film as an in-joke. When Benjamin moved into the 13 bedroom, 30 acre property with his family in 2005, he explained the house "just so happened to have lions, tigers, bears, wolves, and flamingos in the garden".

Benjamin’s passion for the zoo’s animals is undimmed, however, and our interview takes the form of a wander around the zoo, during which we make frequent stops to chat to the animals who live there.These are some of the animals the reader will meet in the book but it has to be said that it takes a long time to meet them. Damon was persuaded to play the role after he was moved by the music and found that Local Hero was a "masterpiece". This could release three tigers, two lions, three bears, a pack of wolves, two pumas or a jaguar, or any combination of the above, out onto the moor and into the stormy night.