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
Performance capture is a genre of acting which is not going to go away, it's going to proliferate more and more. I'm passionate about it, and I love it. It's the most liberating tool an actor has, because you are not limited by your own physicality, look, or color of your eyes.
But the first time I had to stand up and sing with them was when we did the pre-record for the movie and it was that moment where I sort of said to myself: "S**t, now I actually have to do this and I have to stand up and do my stars in your eyes moment!" Wake Up and Make Love With Me was the first song and I thought: "Here we are with Chaz and all the boys..."
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.
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.
I think he (director, Peter Jackson) was originally going to have Kong kill Lumpy. Instead he gave me a role who finally gets devoured by computer graphics ? I don't know whether that is a comment or not.
When I first came out to New Zealand for principal photography, the focus was on voicing Gollum. But Peter wanted Gollum to be the most interactive digital character ever made for a movie, with a combination of live action and digital animation.
Performance capture, for me, is finding the essence of a performance.