"Tigers and lions are a little bit more dog-like in the sense that they still do like to please you," said Browne, who worked for Birds and Animals Unlimited on the two films. "House cats, if they feel like it, they will. But especially when you're working with them, they're like, 'Nah, I don't really want to do that. It's work.'"
Cattitudes haven't hampered Browne's lifelong love of animals, though. As an undergraduate at USC, she studied anthropology with an emphasis on primates and considered moving to South Africa to be a safari guide. But instead, she finished her degree and tried such endeavors as gallery work and fashion styling before answering the call of the wild. "I met my husband, Eric Weld, and he had just gotten into exotic animal training," she said. "I thought, 'Ah, that's what I want to do, too.'"
On her first job, she trained 7-month-old lion cubs for a Whiskas commercial. But the first time she ever worked with a full-grown male lion ? a 550-pound creature named Felix ? was on 2007's "Prey," which she considers the biggest step in her career.
"It was an unfortunate situation actually because my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, and another trainer on that movie, they got shot," she said. "The African farm they were staying at, these people came and robbed their bungalow and shot them, one in the shoulder and then my husband in his hand."
Browne stepped in to finish the movie with Felix and discovered that he responded much differently to a female rather than a male trainer. "They're a little more lovey, a little more accepting," she said.
Since then, Browne has trained animals of all sizes for films including "Step Brothers," "Angels & Demons" and "Zookeeper," but she saves the lion's share of her love for the big cats.
"Maybe it was from watching 'Born Free' when I was younger, but the big cats are really my first passion," she said. "I always have to step back while I'm working and just be amazed at the fact that I'm on leash, or I'm working a tiger or a lion, and I'm just loving the relationship that I can have with them."
Stars with stripes: Based on Benjamin Mee's memoir, director Cameron Crowe's "We Bought a Zoo" centers on a widowed journalist (Matt Damon) who moves his two children into a struggling California zoo. While Crowe focused on coaxing the best performances from the human actors, Browne turned her attention to the tigers.
"We had Katie, who played the old tiger, Spar," said Browne. "It was nothing too difficult, because it's a zoo. We did some interior shots where she would lie there, and Matt Damon would talk to her. He was very good with the tigers. We also had Kismet and Schicka, the younger tigers, who I actually hand-raised. We did have to teach them to jump up into where their indoor facility was on the movie set. They like to show off their jumping abilities. They all like to work for meat."
On a long leash: "One of the biggest and most important things that we taught the cats for 'We Bought a Zoo' was working on cables," said Browne. "The cables are black, plastic-coated steel aircraft cables, and they would attach to their collars. We had 10- and 20-foot cables, depending on the shot. Because we could not be close to them, they had to be secured so that they would be able to work together and around the actors safely."
Stop and go: According to Browne, house cats tend to work in teams of three, but in the case of the Sweden-set "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," one cat stole the show. "His name is Scotty, who is just a domestic short-haired brown tabby," she said. "He did a very good job playing all roles. He had to come in through the window, and then jump into the cottage and run across the floor into the kitchen."
Just act natural: "On 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,' I definitely learned to work a cat without food, because director David Fincher likes a lot of natural action, and natural action you can't do with food," Browne said. "Scotty's very toy- and movement-driven. So I learned to work him with my hand and just little subtle movements. I had never worked with a cat in that way before, so that was fun and new. Whenever you go on set, you never know what you're getting into. You just have to have that personality where you can go with the flow."
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