On the one hand, it's hard to imagine dinosaurs in a movie without immediately thinking "Jurassic Park." Yet it's equally hard to believe that the 1993 groundbreaking dinos-on-a-rampage film is 20 years old. Particularly when stars Laura Dern and Sam Neill visit TODAY as they did on Tuesday to talk about the film's re-release in 3-D -- and absolutely don't look 20 years older than they did in the film.
"She was 11 years old (during the movie)," Neill joked about Dern.
"Very tall for my age," she tossed back.
Regardless, the time has passed quickly. "It seems like yesterday," grinned Neill as they spoke with Matt Lauer. "I'm so looking forward to being in 3-D because I felt so two dimensional for 20 years."
"I remember getting to experience what a great film it is, but the 3-D is awe-inspiring," noted Dern, who added that working on the film was delightfully collaborative, because the special effects were so new at the time: "We were all there together as collaborators and a team ... we were all there with each scene going, 'How are we going to do this?' because it hadn't been done. So it really felt like a family."
Lauer reminded Dern of a recently-uncovered set of audition tapes that showed Gwyneth Paltrow and Helen Hunt auditioning for the role of Dr. Ellie Sattler (the role Dern eventually won) that are going on the auction block, and showed a clip.
"I didn't know!" chuckled Dern. "I'm a lucky girl."
"Jurassic Park 3-D" is in theaters April 5.
Related content: