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
I have a company in the U.K., a performance-capture studio. We're looking to push the boundaries of performance-capture technology in film and video games, but also in live theater, using real-time performance capture with actors onstage, and combining that with holographic imagery.
The fact of the matter is that an actor, if I'm playing a performance capture role and you're playing a live action role and we're having a scene together, there's no difference in our acting processes.
When I first did 'The Lord of the Rings,' I was acting on the set with the other actors, but then I had to go back and repeat the process on my own to do the physical capture on a motion capture stage.
My take is that acting is acting. A performance is a performance. With performance capture, if you don't get the performance on the day, you can't enhance the performance.
I am a bit evangelical, I know, but performance-capture is still misunderstood.
In performance capture roles, it's not a committee of animators that author the role, it's the actor. I think that's a significant thing for people to understand.
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.
Middle-earth is a universe I know very well.