Owen Wilson, a golden retriever among actors, admits that he based his slacker dude in "You, Me and Dupree" on Blue, the chocolate Labrador of his boyhood.

"Dupree had the personality of a dog. You love him in spite of himself," the actor riffs on the phone from Los Angeles. The straw-haired goofball has gone from acting like a dog to acting with one in "Marley & Me," which opened Christmas Day and became the top-grossing movie of the long holiday weekend.

Wilson stars (with Jennifer Aniston) as journalist John Grogan, author of the bittersweet bestseller chronicling what he learned from his mischievous pooch. The Oscar-nominated screenwriter and accidental actor brings to the role more than a few life lessons learned from another of his canine companions, an Australian cattle dog named Garcia.

"The main thing my dog taught me to value is to be in the moment," says Wilson, 40, traces of Texas twang lingering in his voice.

"Owen speaks slowly, but his mind is quick," says "Marley" director David Frankel, who ranks Wilson as "a great improviser," up there with Meryl Streep.

Wilson gives good phone interviews, wielding a handset as a pro might a ping-pong paddle. His words have bounce, spin and loop. This is, after all, the voice of Lightning McQueen in "Cars," the guy who improvised Lightning's trademark "Ka-chow!"

He's also the writer and actor whose character Dignan in "Bottle Rocket" warned, "Be sensitive to the fact that other people are not comfortable talking about emotional disturbances. Um, I'm fine with that, but -- other people." And he is fine with that -- to a point.

Having pulled himself out of the despair that led to an alleged suicide attempt in August 2007, Wilson does not expound upon what it took to get out of his personal dark space. But neither does he avoid the question.

"They tell you that you have to do it yourself. And you do. But it's also family and friends that help you get your mind straight," he says. "And movies, movies, movies."

Wilson draws strength from his parents, and also from brothers Andrew and Luke, both actors. His No. 1 friend is filmmaker Wes Anderson.

Like Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino, Wilson learned film history while working the rental counter at a video emporium (in Wilson's case, a Dallas-area Blockbuster).

"For me, acting and writing are alike in some ways. I always try to find a different way of saying something. It's nice to try different things, to feel that energy of saying something fresh," he observes.

As Anderson once noted, "Owen is not concerned with how to play a scene, but with how he can improve it."

This may endear the actor to his directors, but it has been known to irritate co-stars, including brother Luke, who on "Bottle Rocket" snapped, "Why don't you just say the lines the way you wrote them?"

He got a taste of his own medicine on "Marley" -- where it took 22 canines in all to play the dog. Wilson couldn't say the lines as written because the canine co-stars proved as unpredictable as Luke once found him. "Owen played off the dog," says animal trainer Mathilde DeCagny.

So, Owen Wilson, was W.C. Fields right about never working with animals or children, those diabolical upstagers?

"Uh, I think he might have been right about children. Because when a baby's done with a scene, he's done. Dogs are better trained -- they'll give you that extra take."