Andy Serkis
Andy Serkis
Andrew Clement "Andy" Serkisis an English film actor, director and author. He is best known for his performance capture roles comprising motion capture acting, animation and voice work for such computer-generated characters as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogyand The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the eponymous King Kong in the 2005 film, Caesar in Riseand Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Captain Haddock / Sir Francis Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintinand Supreme Leader...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth20 April 1964
CityLondon, England
Andy Serkis quotes about
My sons have to learn that you take the rough with the smooth and they've seen a lot of smooth in the years that they've been around. They didn't see the early years. But both my mum and myself are actors and we constantly tell them it's not easy. But they understand that.
They [traditional studios] probably don't understand is that it's a genuine advancement in the actor's tradition. And you know, the tradition and craft of acting. And it's the latest step. You know, we, we tend to find forms of delivering stories that fit our times.
I think there will always be a particular generation of actors who think that they're going to be replaced by robots. But certainly the emerging actors understand that that's part of the craft.
In terms of animation, animators are actors as well. They are fantastic actors. They have to draw from how they feel emotionally about the beat of a scene that they're working on. They work collaboratively.
I've always thought of acting as a tool to change society. I watch a lot of actors and I see panic in their eyes because they don't know why they act and I know why I act. Whether I'm a good or a bad actor, I know why I do it.
But that's not what an actor does. An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.
Performance capture is a technology, not a genre; it's just another way of recording an actor's performance.
What's fantastic is that there's a real growing appreciation for performance-capture technology as a tool for acting.
I spent a lot of time on my own working out the physical vocabulary for how Gollum moved. As I say, I drew on a lot of Tolkein's descriptions of how he moves, but also the conceptual artist sketches.
I've been told that some guy wrote something like, 'Andy Serkis does everything, animators do nothing.' Of course I never in a million years said that, wouldn't ever say that. It's not within my understanding of filmmaking to ever say anything like that.
I've always been a huge fan of Charles Lawton's performance in 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame,' so somewhere along the line, I've always wanted to play that character.
Every single frame has got something going on in the background; in many ways, it's an embarrassment of riches. I guess some of the New York scenes, especially in the third act when Kong is back. Some of that rampage stuff, with the people running down the street and all the shop signs and all the neon that just goes on for miles. Those big aerial shots in New York that completely faithfully re-create New York at the time. That's pretty special stuff.
As I started to research gorillas, I began to understand that they're all totally individual and idiosyncratic, and they have their own personalities.
I would love to direct an 'Apes' movie. It would be in the spirit of where I'm going with my career - avatars played by actors to say something about the human condition.