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
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.
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..."
In a personal way, to do with family and the father-son relationship, in a kind of artistic way with regard to him being an art student. I also studied the visual arts at Lancaster University. I then decided to become an actor as he was becoming a musician. And then as an actor/performer, we have similar sort of interests - music hall and that whole world. So, there's a lot that I felt connected with.
The thing is, I don't just take roles because they're performance capture.
If James Franco's wearing a costume, and I'm wearing a motion capture suit, we don't act any differently with each other because of what we're wearing. We're embodying our roles.
I had to relearn how to ride a horse like an ape. I had to change how I jumped off and how I gripped them with my thighs and distribute my weight differently.
I've done a lot of films that are purely live-action roles, and even if I hadn't come across performance capture as a technology, I think I'd always consider myself a sort of mercurial actor.
The voice he created for character was so perfect. The character was quite scary and the voice was quite scary at times.
What's fantastic is that there's a real growing appreciation for performance-capture technology as a tool for acting.
This was absolutely, really needed because we were doing really badly this year.
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 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.