Even if nobody else ever buys the official Olaf stuffy, actor Josh Gad has at least one kid in his fan club.

“I took her to see Monsters University in the theatre,” says the actor, speaking about his two-going-on-three-year-old daughter. “It was the first movie that I’d ever taken her to, the preview comes on for Frozen, and in terms of my voice, the only thing it had was my laugh. And she literally hears my laugh and looks at me and goes, ‘That’s dada. More daddy!’”

In reality, Gad is in the catbird seat with his role in Disney’s animated blockbuster, Frozen.

His character, Olaf—a hopelessly optimistic snowman who dreams of lounging on a hot beach—takes his place at the end of a line of indelible Disney characters including Aladdin’s Genie, Sebastian from The Little Mermaid, and The Lion King’s Timon and Pumbaa.

Pixar honcho John Lasseter told him: “You now become something bigger than yourself with this movie… this character is one for the ages. You’ll always have that, but it belongs to the world now.”

Olaf brings the comedy to Frozen, but “also the heart” as Gad puts it.

“What I imagined was, if a baby could speak, and that baby had a full voice but was trapped in the body of a snowman, what would it sound like?” he explains. “That was what kinda created the sound of Olaf. I wanted him to be a young child that was suddenly given the gift of speech, but didn’t know what to do with it.”

A former Daily Show correspondent who scored a Tony nomination for his role as Elder Cunninghnam in The Book of Mormon, Gad is primed for an antic creation like Olaf. His first improvised recording session for the character actually ended up in the film.

And it sounds like there was a lifetime of prep behind it.

"I saw Lion King about six times in the theatre, but the one that resonated with me the most in terms of what would set me on my path was Aladdin,” he says. “I remember sitting in the theatre and watching this tour de force performance by Robin Williams as the Genie. And I looked at my mom and I literally said, ‘I want to do that one day.’”