HOLLYWOOD -- Canadian singer and voice-over specialist Cree Summer takes great glee in playing the princess in Disney's new animated adventure, Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

The royal one in question is the Atlantean Princess Kidagakash, or Kida, the feisty 8,500-year-old heir to the throne in the underwater world the animators have invented.

"I was, like, Yeah, cool!," the ebullient Summer says now of her first encounter with the character -- a pencil sketch -- more than three years ago when Disney was casting voices.

"They told me a bit about what a brave heart she is and what kind of warrior she is and what a hot honey she is," Summer says with a hearty laugh, her punctuation for most of her exclamations. "I love her face tattoos: It's so punk rock."

Summer, who turns 32 in July, is one of a handful of Hollywood-based vocal talents cited as the superstars of their unique profession. Sometimes credited as Cree Summer Francks in films such as Rugrats In Paris: The Movie, she is the daughter of eccentric Canadian singer-actor Don Francks and former American singer-dancer Lili Clarke.

Among dozens of roles, her characters include Max Gibson ("a really stacked African-American chick," she says) in Batman Beyond, Elmyra Duff in Pinky, Elmyra & The Brain, and Suzie Carmichael in the Rugrats TV series and movies. She started on this specialty as the teen voice of Penny in the Nelvana-produced, Toronto-made Inspector Gadget in 1983.

"Being female and African-American, the joy and freedom that animation gives me is limitless," Summer says. "I get to play everything. I get to play any gender, any race, make an inanimate object come to life, and it's so much an incorporation of my imagination. It's on you to use your sound to give this character life, and I love the creativity that goes into that. So it's very satisfying. I mean, music is my very first love but right next door is animation."

Summer, whose father is of Caucasian origin and her mother of African heritage, credits her peculiar childhood for her unusual ability to create vocal characters.

Born in Encino, Calif., Summer was whisked by her "hippie parents" to the Red Pheasant Cree Indian reserve near North Battleford, Sask., when she was an infant. There she lived with her parents in a tepee, then a traditional mud house Francks built without electricity or water, and finally a log cabin belonging to an elderly medicine woman.

Pressure from the band chief pushed the family to leave late in 1974. The family then drifted around before moving to Toronto, where Cree's parents are still based.

"Living on a reservation and spending so much time alone and not in school -- and also (later) living in a school bus and going lots of different places -- I spent a lot of my childhood alone. So now I utilize the voices in my head. You know, this is just a lot of my childhood entertainment, to keep myself having a good time, and now I get paid for it. Suckers!

"It's great. It's so much fun. I can't believe it qualifies as a job. It's good. It's a good thing."