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In Pixar Animation's classic fish story "Finding Nemo," Ellen DeGeneres repeatedly stole the show voicing Dory, the sidekick with the short-term memory. Now, 13 years later, she's the star of "Finding Dory" (out Friday), in which her little blue tang swims to California's Marine Life Institute in search of the parents Dory suddenly remembers she has somewhere.

This film, however, may be grabbed by the tentacles of one of the vast aquarium's reluctant residents: Hank, a grumpy mimic octopus who longs to get transferred to a facility in Cleveland where there's no petting pool and he won't be fondled by — yuck — random children.

Shape-shifting, incredibly dextrous Hank is being touted as Pixar's most ambitious digital character to date, and he's voiced by television's reigning crank master, "Modern Family" and "Married with Children" star Ed O'Neill.

"He's phobic," O'Neill says of Hank's aversion to anything touchy/feely. "He can't stand it, he just wants to be left alone. By chance he runs into Dory and she's been tagged for Cleveland, so Hank concocts some trade whereby he'll help her find her parents because he knows the layout of the place, and she'll give him the tag to get on the truck for Cleveland. But she drives him crazy because she's got that memory problem and keeps forgetting the promises she made and so forth."

O'Neill marvels at mimic octopi's abilities to assume the appearances of other critters — it's the only marine animal science knows about that can — and do other amazing things.

"If you put it in a jar, it will unscrew the jar from the inside," the 70-year-old actor reports. "It can take on shapes and colors and forms of, like, a lionfish or a coral snake or any number of other sea creatures. It has a camouflaging system that can look like a pile of coral. It is astounding."

And also understandably, it was a bear (is there such a thing as a bear fish?) for Pixar to animate. But O'Neill, who also voiced a small role in sister company Walt Disney Animation's "Wreck-It Ralph," wants you to know that his series of four-hour sessions in a Burbank recording studio over three years were hardly a vacation either.

"When I did 'Married with Children,' I was driving the show every week and predominantly in almost all of the scenes," the erstwhile Al Bundy explains. "That was in front of a live audience, and it was a tough job, because it was a lot of work and big comedy. 'Modern Family' is probably the best job I've ever had because there are three separate but related families and we're rarely together, so the work hours are great.

"But in 'Finding Dory' you're alone, all of your stuff is concentrated and, generally, these sessions are grueling," O'Neill reports. "Listen, I'm not playing a guy who's laying out in a field, smoking a pipe and getting a little sun. Hank is under a lot of pressure and stress and frustration and anger and fear. All that stuff requires an amazing amount of energy to do over a four-hour period of time. You're gulping water and conscious of saving your voice — you become very much like a singer. I can remember driving over to Disney on the 405 to the 101 to the 134, and as I got near Burbank I'd get this feeling in my stomach like, 'Oh man, get ready. This is no day at the beach.' But I loved it. It was challenging and fun; I was happy to be there. But it was tough."

So he's, uh, looking forward to coming back for a future "Finding Hank"?

"That's a little bit down the road, wouldn't you say?" O'Neill says, laughing. "I would imagine that Hank probably does a better job as a sidekick. A little bit of Hank probably goes a long way."

Wasn't that what they said about Dory in "Nemo"?

"Oh, that's true!" O'Neill acknowledges, sounding excited. "But listen, that's not my department."

Contact Bob Strauss at bob.strauss@langnews.com and @bscritic on Twitter