Andy Serkis Quotes

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.

Second films are, you know, like 'difficult second albums', so it's a tricky position to be in but I think he's made a highly accomplished film.

I think that Gollum is really the character who is a very human character, and he's very flawed, like most humans are, and has good and bad sides.

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 ... "

'Macbeth' is an amazing story.

I've always been really in touch with my primal instincts. In my profession, you have to be.

Not a day goes by where I'm not reminded of Gollum by some person in the street who asks me to do his voice or wants to talk to me about him. But because 'The Hobbit' has been talked about as a project for many years, I knew that at some point I'd have to reengage with him.

Gollum is my picture of Dorian Gray. He will be with me for the rest of life, and I will grow to look more like him as I get older.

And 'Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll' was a very transitional film for me in that I was one of the producers and you know, came up with the idea with the writer and the producer, as well. But, it was a very collaborative event. You know, I really love working in that way.

You'll very rarely find that you can enhance a performance to give it a real emotional centre and truth ... after the fact.

My livelihood depends on the art of animators.

I play saxophone, I play tenor sax.

You never really know why you become an actor: it's a visceral thing, an emotional thing.

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.

The wonderful thing about 48 fps is the integration of live action and CG elements; that is something I learned from 'The Hobbit.' We are so used to 24 fps and the romance of celluloid ... but at 48 fps, you cannot deny the existence of these CG creations in the same time frame and space and environment as the live action.

Great actors like Willem Dafoe and Ellen Page and Samuel L. Jackson will go and do a videogame, because they understand that storytelling isn't just necessarily about filmmaking.

No matter how extreme things get, it still has that ring of truth about it that backs the characters - even though they're despicable and what they're doing isn't right you still care for their fate.

I'm definitely moving more towards directing now.

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.

People used to say, 'Andy Serkis lent his movements to Gollum,' and now they say, 'Andy Serkis played Caesar.' That's a significant leap.

I expect at some point I'll probably want to go back on stage and do some theater, because I've not done theater in 10 years.

Before I became an actor, I was a visual artist, and I've always hankered for the storytelling behind the camera.

The thing is, I don't just take roles because they're performance capture.

I love the ability to transform because that, for me, is a liberation.

I stayed in Baghdad every summer until I was 14. My dad's sister is still there, but many of my relatives have managed to get out. People forget that there are still people there who are not radicalized in any particular direction, trying to live normal lives in a very difficult situation.

I think even back as far as 'Lord of the Rings,' there was always the chance that 'The Hobbit' would be made, even way back then. Of course at that point, Peter Jackson didn't probably think at that point that he'd be directing it.

I had a cat called Dizz, after Dizzy Gillespie.

As soon as you do it, actors realize there is no difference playing a performance-captured role or a live-action role.

I do listen to myself sometimes and think, 'Is my moral compass so easily swayed by the characters I play, or is it me growing as a human being?'

'How To Train your Dragon 2' is an amazing film. I think it's an extraordinary film. The animation in it is fantastic.

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.

The reason that some motion-capture films don't work is if the scripts are not good, and the characters aren't engaging, then you don't believe in the journey, and you're not connected to it. It's not the technology's fault.

When I'm working on the scripts or working with the other actors or rehearsing with the director, and when the director is cutting the movie, and we've shot the scene, the director is not looking at the visual effects.

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.

Put it this way: If I had to go back to 1968 and wear the makeup that John Chambers made for the original 'Planet of the Apes' series, I think I would rather wear a unitard.

Middle-earth is a universe I know very well.

Games aren't going to go away. BAFTA's got a category for games as an art form. The Academy should think about that, too.

I think we can be very narrow-minded in this country; you see something that someone's done and immediately want them to do the same thing again - but if they don't, they're criticised for not doing the same thing again, but if they do they're just repeating themselves.

Working with and collaborating with and for Peter Jackson was an incredible experience because he is such a phenomenal filmmaker.

I'm quite contrary. If people agree on something, I tend to gravitate the other way by my nature. I don't like to be told what to do. I think it goes back to school. I like to do things I want to do and I really don't like doing what I don't want to do.

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.

If it was a great script and a great character, I would love to do a romantic comedy.

When I was in theater I was forever trying to inhabit a space which puts yourself under the microscope as an actor and your personality and your take on life, but actually through another portal of a character.

People find it hard to get their heads around nominating a computer-generated character, but every time you see Gollum on the screen, that's me who is acting up there - even if it is behind a mass of pixels - and it's my voice you hear.

I never felt totally, 100%, patriotically English ... I'd seen a lot of the world by an early age - sort of spent a lot of time traveling around Lebanon and I'd seen Babylon, and Damascus, and all sorts of places in the Middle East by the time I was ten. Then we'd return to Ruslip in West London ... Done a fair bit of traveling really.

I remember kind of doing early acting and thinking, 'God, they don't paint behind the sets.' It's a bit of a shame, really - 'Oh, what's on the other side of this wall? Oh, you can see the plywood.' I was really disappointed. I just thought that these things were real, from watching things as a kid.

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.

What's fantastic is that there's a real growing appreciation for performance-capture technology as a tool for acting.

The difference between the big budget films I've done is the length of time. But in terms of the day-to-day, you're still going on to set, you're getting into character, and you're going and doing your job, so there's absolutely no difference. It's just the structure around it and the length of time. But in terms of budget and money, it doesn't really manifest itself.

For film and games, there is now a fantastic method of actors portraying characters which don't necessarily look like themselves. And yet you've still got the heart and soul of the performance.

'The Hobbit' was one of the first biggish books I ever read. I remember vividly the 'riddles in the dark' passage, and it meant a lot to me to finally get to play it after all these years.

Gollum is entirely based on the notion of addiction. The way that the ring pervades him, makes him craving, lustful, depletes him physically, psychologically and mentally.

That's why I ended up going to Lancaster University, because they had a visual arts course, and in the first year it was like a broad visual arts course in sculpture, painting, graphics - all of that.

I think parenting is very different now. We're totally governed by our children!

Performance capture, for me, is finding the essence of a performance.

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.

Thank God for Skype!

I think Caesar is one of the most empathetic characters that I've played. I think that's the key to a successful leadership. Being able to keep your ears open at all times.

I think my mum wanted me to join the army or something, or become a surveyor - something with good career prospects.

What's wonderful about Tolkien and Shakespeare is that they show up your own individual microscope. They're so infinitely vast. You can reinterpret them in so many ways.

Britain has enormous amount of talent, as we've seen from the BAFTAs. It's all here, and it has to be allowed to flourish.

J.J. Abrams is an all-time hero of mine, really lovely to be working with him.

The learning curve is 'The Hobbit' is being shot in 3D.

What I'm saying is people like Hoodwink are not kind of evil villains, they're part of humanity. We can choose to disassociate ourselves from them and we can choose to pretend they're not there, but they are. We're all together in this.

I do love nature, but I don't suppose I'd spent more time in zoos as a child than anyone else!

My agent told me they were casting for the voice of Gollum. I hadnt read The Lord of the Rings, but I read the script and realized what an amazing role it was. I developed a voice for the audition tape, then met Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh at the auditions and fell in love with them both.

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.

Yeah, I mean, climbing's always been a massive hobby of mine up until, kind of, recent times when I've had family, but no, it's been a driving passion in my life and, uh, I've always wanted to climb the Matterhorn. It was the mountain that, sort of, inspired me to climb, as a youngster. So, it was great to be able to get to do it.

My dad was working abroad, in Iraq, and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him, in Baghdad, off and on. For the first ten years of my life, we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad, so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East.

A lot of actors on film sets ... very often they're not paying attention to the physical world around them. I think through studying art, I've always had that awareness and that's something that I've wanted to bring in to go beyond acting ... As a form of expression, they are intrinsically linked.

Playing a character in a video game is different to other performances because your character can't lead the audience of players in one direction.

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.

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 am a bit evangelical, I know, but performance-capture is still misunderstood.

Gollum is Gollum - though in 'Lord of the Rings' he's 600 years old and in 'The Hobbit' he's 540, so he looks a little bit more handsome.

I love playing real characters ... if they're not around anymore it's helpful because you won't get sued! But there's so much research involved and I love that part of the process.

Gorilla tourism is vital to Rwanda's economy: It's the third highest source of income.

I wanted to be a painter, really, when I was growing up as a kid. It was one thing that really took a grip on me.

Did you happen to catch the film I did between 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Kong?' It was a nice little Jennifer Garner comedy, '13 Going on 30,' and I play her boss. In my big scene, I get to moonwalk - pretty well, I thought - to Michael Jackson.

Any sort of role requires a certain amount of research and embodiment of the character and psychological investigation.

I don't want to play a voice.

When you do animation - well, straightforward animation, although it's not straightforward - the voice for a character or something, they're always singular experiences, really.

As I started to research gorillas, I began to understand that they're all totally individual and idiosyncratic, and they have their own personalities.

Just being an ape is a workout.

Originally when I went off to work on 'The Lord of The Rings' I got a call from my agent saying that I was just going to do a voice. But I couldn't really approach it like that. To get Gollum's voice I had to play the character.

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.

That's what I think is the biggest challenge, is just being still and learning how to just be present in that stillness and not over do it, not over act.

Gorillas are still wild creatures. That's made very clear when you observe them in nature. They charge and perform other displays that are terrifying by design. But they don't attack unless they feel threatened.

My first job when I got my equity card was acting in 14 plays back-to-back. Playing that many roles, you look for ways of differentiating the characters physically, which goes hand in hand with understanding them psychologically.

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.

There are no rhymes or reason, actually. Having said that, you know, cause there are people who are absolutely single-minded about their process and they can still come up with great work. But (what) I enjoy and it's the same, I suppose, as I became more of a family man, I enjoy, I enjoy an atmosphere where it, you know, doesn't have to be about conflict to get good results.

It's a different rhythm than most movies. For a lot of the actors, you're 12,000 miles away from home. It becomes a way of life - getting up at five in the morning, shooting every day, day in day out, for 270 days. The new cast playing the dwarves were carrying incredibly heavy weights in their suits, they sat through hours of make-up every day. So it's quite challenging from a stamina point of view.

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.

I've been writing and wanting to direct for a long time.

I remember once, I read in a horoscope, because I'm an Aries, I read this terrible thing, which really affected me, which said, "You will never be original. You will always be an interpreter." (Laughs) I thought, "Oh my God." You know, I had to live with that on my back for [all my life].

I'd already started directing short films when we were doing 'Lord of the Rings,' then videogame projects.

If 'The Hobbit' happens - and there's reason to believe that it will - then I think I'm in with a chance! Gollum is very much part of 'The Hobbit,' after all.

Having done a lot of theater, I'm used to sustaining characters over long periods of time.

Actors' performances in films are enhanced in a million different ways, down to the choice of camera shot by the director - whether it's in slow motion or whether it's quick cut - or ... the choice of music behind the close-up or the costume that you're wearing or the makeup.

Hoodwink is a product of his environment. He grew up in Belfast, he was part of the UDA and he fought for what he believed in - or was brainwashed into believing - because of the people that surrounded him.