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
When you have children, you realize that at the end, it's all about passing on, about handing down.
J.J. Abrams is an all-time hero of mine, really lovely to be working with him.
J.J. Abrams and I met, and we just had this incredible kind of vibe between us.
Gollum was so interesting to me because he's morally ambivalent, and I love the notion of a quest that is to lose something. Not to gain, but to get rid of something.
I'm a Mac user. I think it depends on how you were brought up, and I was introduced to Apple quite early. They're certainly the best for visual stuff and film-directing.
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.
I think the actors in 'Greystoke' were amazing. They had a really good performance coach called Peter Elliott who's, of his time, one of the greatest simian performance coaches for actors.
Performance capture, for me, is finding the essence of a performance.
On 'The Avengers,' I've been working closely with Mark Ruffalo.
Over the years, people have asked me, 'Do you think there should be a separate category for acting in the digital realm? Or hybrid sort of awards for digital characters?' and so on. And I've always really maintained that I don't believe so.
Looking back, when I was Gollum, I suppose I did break the mold to a certain extent. I'm proud, and very thrilled, to be a part of that.
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.
My natural bent is to have an overabundance of energy, and motion-capture essentializes your every breath, your every move. Seeing yourself through that mask, you realize how far you can pull back and make the performance even more powerful.