The Real Life Partners Of The Cast Of Disney's Luca

After exploring the secret lives of toys in the "Toy Story" films, imagining what a society of talking "Cars" might look like, and following the adventures of incorporated monsters and lost fish, Pixar turned its uncannily realistic computer animation and masterful storytelling in 2021 to the world of sea monsters. Pixar's 24th animated feature, "Luca," involves a boy named Luca who is a sea monster, but when he visits the surface (against his parents' wishes) he can pretend to be human and enjoy the pleasures of a summer on the Italian Riviera with his best friend.

Inspired by equal parts folklore, nostalgia, and classic films, the high-concept "Luca" could only work with a properly talented voice cast. A number of big stars, character actors, and celebrities voice the various humans and monsters of the film, and they've got interesting lives off-screen. Here's a look at the spouses and partners of the voice cast of "Luca."

The familiar, midwestern deadpan of Jim Gaffigan is noticeable to "Luca" viewers — the well-known comedian plays Lorenzo Paguro in the Pixar film, the title character's good-guy sea monster father preoccupied with raising crabs. Gaffigan is one of the most popular and top-grossing stand-up comedians of the 2000s. In 2003, he married Jeannie Gaffigan (née Noth), and they have five children together.

Jeannie is also her husband's creative partner and chief career architect. Since 2005, according to Country Living, Jeannie, a performer and comedian herself, has helped produce write most of Jim's material, including his books "Dad is Fat" and "Food: A Love Story," his specials "King Baby," "Mr. Universe," "Obsessed," and "Noble Ape," and the 2015-16 TV Land sitcom "The Jim Gaffigan Show." On Jim Gaffigan's previous show "My Boys," Jeannie had a recurring role as Meredith, and played several roles on "The Jim Gaffigan Show," too.

In 2017, according to AARP, doctors discovered a pear-shaped tumor in Jeannie Gaffigan's brain. She wrote about her hospitalizations and lengthy recovery in the bestselling memoir "When Life Gives You Pears," revealing that the health crisis helped her re-evaluate her life and priorities. "This potentially tragic prognosis strengthened my faith in God, deepened my love for my family and friends, and renewed my hope in humanity," she writes, before adding a true-to-form zinger, "So, what I'm saying is that it's light reading. by the end you'll be all, "Boo-hoo! I want a brain tumor too!"

"Saturday Night Live" and "Bridesmaids" star Maya Rudolph does a lot of voice work, and in 2020 she won an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Connie the Hormone Monstress on Netflix's "Big Mouth." In 2021, audiences could hear but not see Rudolph once more when she voiced concerned mom Daniela Paguro in Pixar's "Luca."

According to The New York Times, Rudolph has been in a romantic relationship and partnership for more than 20 years with writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. The two connected in 2001 after Anderson split with singer-songwriter Fiona Apple. Rudolph calls Anderson as her husband, even though they are not technically married. "He's the father of my child, and I live with him, and we are a couple, and we are not going anywhere," she told The Times. Anderson and Rudolph actually have four children together: Pearl, Minnie, Jack, and Lucille.

As for Anderson, he's one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of his generation, with eight Academy Award nominations to his name. He's written and directed eight features, including "Boogie Nights," "Magnolia," and "The Master." He is extremely private and an unabashed homebody and doting husband. In brief anecdotes, Anderson told GQ and The Guardian about his fierce dedication to family, revealing that he drives his kids to school every day after dutifully preparing their breakfast. He also admitted to Vulture that a moment of vulnerability between he and Rudolph served as the kernel of the idea for "Phantom Thread." 

Sacha Baron Cohen is a comic visionary, a man who goes deep in character and deep undercover to viciously satirize the modern world and uncover social ills. But apart from playing Kazakhstani reporter Borat and British rap enthusiast Ali G in movies and on TV shows, Cohen also occasionally takes on a fun acting part, like voicing Uncle Ugo in Pixar's "Luca."

According to Insider, Cohen met actor Isla Fisher in 2001, and in 2010 they married after a six-year engagement. Fisher registered on the pop culture radar in the United States in the early 2000s, first as Mary Jane in the live-action "Scooby-Doo" movie and as the aggressively flirtatious politician's daughter Gloria Cleary in "Wedding Crashers." Ever since, Fisher has been an in-demand comic actor, starring in stuff like the frothy "Confessions of a Shopaholic," the dark "Bachelorette," the silly "Hot Rod," and the warm "Godmothered."

Well before she became a star of American movies, Fisher was a celebrity in her native Australia (the couple moved back there permanently in 2020). In the mid-'90s she starred on the popular soap "Home and Away," and before she turned 20, she'd already published two novels: "Bewitched," and "Seduced by Fame." In the 2010s, she went back to writing, authoring the kids novel series "Marge in Charge." Like many Hollywood couples, Cohen and Fisher are extremely private, although she did tell Marie Claire in 2021 that she feels "humor" is the key to their marriage. 

British-TV food personality and chef Gino D'Acampo portrays a village priest in "Luca," and like his character, D'Acampo is from Italy, growing up outside of Naples in the southern part of the country, according to Ireland's The Independent. He was inspired to follow his grandfather, a professional chef, into the family business. D'Acampo's talents with food led to a fruitful career, and it also led him to his wife.

At age 18, D'Acampo left Italy for Marbella, Spain, taking a job in the kitchen at actor Sylvester Stallone's Mambo King restaurant. That's where he met co-worker Jessica Stellina Morrison, who came from an English and Italian family. "She was my first woman," D'Acampo told The Independent, adding that after she led him into manhood, they broke up for a year. Then they reconnected, moved to the U.K., and by the time Gino was 24 (Jessica is "a few years older" he told the outlet), they were married and started growing their family, eventually having two boys and one girl, per The Sun.  

Jessica is a stay-at-home mom, or a "lady of leisure," as Gino calls her, and although he doesn't talk about family life in interviews much, he did reveal that his wife actually handles the big Sunday dinner, which is an Italian tradition. "We all really look forward to it," Gino told Great British Life in 2014. 

Peter Sohn voices Ciccio in "Luca," the latest in a long line of credits he's accumulated at Pixar. He also portrayed Emile in "Ratatouille," Squishy in "Monsters University," and the Pet Collector in "The Good Dinosaur," a film he also directed and co-wrote. Sohn served as an artist on numerous Pixar movies since the early 2000s, and his colleagues used his face as the "inspiration" for child explorer Russell in "Up," according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Sohn trained for Pixar at the California Institute of the Arts, where, according to CGSociety, he met his wife, artist and animation professional Anna Chambers. She worked as an artist and designer for many TV cartoons in the 2000s, including "Dilbert," "Futurama," "Dexter's Laboratory," and "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends." Chambers also illustrates pop-up books, including "Silly Haunted House," for which she shared in a 2015 Moonbeam Children's Book Award.

Giacomo Gianniotti took some time off from his regular (although now ended) gig on "Grey's Anatomy" as the doomed Dr. Andrew DeLuca to play Giacomo, a colorful Italian fisherman in "Luca." Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2017, according to People, the actor proposed to Nichole Gustafson, but not before jetting off to Northern California to seek her father's blessing in person, Gianniotti told Entertainment Tonight.

Now Nichole Gianniotti, the hairstylist and makeup artist counts among her credits the short film"The Interrogation," the reality TV series "Almost Naked," and the Italy-set grief-and-romance drama "Azzurro," which starred Giacomo, whom she wed in April 2019. The pair married in the Italian lakeside village of Castel Gandolfo, not long after they trained together for the Tough Mudder endurance running contest.

In a chat with Style Me Pretty, Nichole revealed that she and Giacomo had "instant chemistry" the moment they met on a photo shoot for a magazine (she was hired as his hair and makeup stylist). Despite the spark, however, Giacomo "waited for a month" before pursuing her, after which he orchestrated "one romantic date after the next." The whirlwind continued from there, leading to a year-and-a-half long engagement until their picturesque wedding, during which Nicole said she "started Dj'ing" while "Giacomo got behind the bar and started doing his old flair bartending tricks." They followed that with a drool-worthy honeymoon that saw them spending "a few weeks" on the pristine beaches of the Philippines and Indonesia. 

The "Luca" character Concetta Aragosta, an older lady who might also be a sea monster like so many others in the movie, is portrayed by veteran theatrical and voice actor Elisa Gabrielli. "Luca" is the latest project for the in-demand voice performer, who can be heard in "South Park," "Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa," and the "Kung Fu Panda" TV series, as well as in lots of video games, including "Skyrim" and "The Sims 3."

Gabrielli's husband, Floyd Van Buskirk, is a classic "hey, it's that person" kind of performer, a character actor who appears on screen for a few minutes in a movie or on a single episode of a TV show, delivers his lines, gets the laugh or advances the plot, and then gets out. Van Buskirk boasts dozens of credits dating back to the early '90s, appearing in small roles on "Northern Exposure," "The Practice," "ER," "Gilmore Girls," "NCIS," "Reno 911," "The Mentalist," and "New Girl." His biggest part came in "The Fur is Gone," a wacky web series about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of a play. Van Buskirk portrayed "Floyd" in eight episodes. His voice can also be heard bringing various characters to life in the vast "World of Warcraft" online game.

Van Buskirk doesn't do a lot of press, but he did tell Play & Humor in 1986 that he's also formally trained in improv, and even competed in something called Theater Sports at the time.