Andy Serkis, the actor responsible for bringing Gollum to life in "The Lord of the Rings" franchise, says he has moved away from his previous "evangelical" stance on performance capture technology. In a recent interview with the Times, Serkis explained that he no longer tries to convince people of the complexity of the medium because the technology is so misunderstood.
Serkis noted that he used to spend hours explaining how performance capture is a form of acting, only to watch people's eyes glaze over. He stated, "I calmed down. Now I just think, ‘If you get it? Great.’" He clarified that he never really cared about people associating him with his various digitally-altered characters, which include Kong in "King Kong" and Caesar in the "Planet of the Apes" trilogy.
The actor compared the creation of Gollum to the use of physical prosthetics. Serkis argued that performances like Gollum are authored by an actor in the same way a prosthetics team engineered John Hurt in "The Elephant Man." He observed that, for some reason, a performance under a physical mask is more understandable to some people than a digital mask.
The debate over the recognition of such performances continues. In May, "Lord of the Rings" filmmaker Peter Jackson suggested that the current fear surrounding AI in film is why Serkis likely won't win awards for Gollum. Jackson stated, "I don’t think a Gollum-type character or a generated character has any hope for winning any awards," which he called "a bit unfair" because Serkis' work is a "human-generated performance 100% of the way."
Serkis is currently filming "The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum," a project he is also directing. The film is scheduled to open in theaters on Dec. 17, 2027. The cast includes the return of Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Elijah Wood as Frodo, and Lee Pace as King Thranduil, alongside new cast members Kate Winslet as Marigol, Jamie Dornan as Strider, Leo Woodall as Halvard, and Anya Taylor-Joy as an elf. Serkis' memoir, "My Pressures: The Bizarrely True Story of Andy Serkis," was released on Tuesday.
