Andy Serkis

Actor

• Born: April 20, 1964
• Place of Birth: London, England

Contribution: Andy Serkis is an Emmy Award–nominated English actor best known for his portrayal of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film series.

Background

Andy Serkis was born on April 20, 1964, in the Ruislip district of London, England. Serkis, his brother, and three sisters were born to an English mother, who was a special education teacher, and an Iraqi father, who practiced gynecology in Baghdad. Growing up, the Serkis children only saw their father during holidays before he returned to England permanently in 1978.

As a teenager, Serkis became interested in the arts, particularly painting, and he later enrolled in Lancaster University in northwestern England to study visual arts. While there, he discovered an intense love of acting when he was cast in the lead role in Barrie Keefe’s play Gotcha, about a young student whose feelings of being unappreciated cause him to become violent. The experience changed Serkis’s career ambitions, and after graduating in 1985, he began his acting career in English theater.

Career

In the mid-1980s, Serkis joined the Dukes Playhouse in Lancaster and began acting in a steady stream of plays. After joining the acting trade union and receiving his equity card, Serkis appeared in a variety of plays in many of England’s most famous theaters. Over the years, Serkis performed not only at the Dukes Playhouse but also at the Royal Court Theatre in London, the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, and the Hull Truck Theatre in Kingston upon Hull. He acted extensively in productions of Shakespearean drama, including King Lear, Othello, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Serkis transitioned to screen acting in 1989, when he appeared in several episodes of the ITV sitcom The New Statesman. In addition to his theater work, he continued to perform in a steady stream of supporting roles in television and film for the next decade, appearing in the series Streetwise in 1989, the 1998 drama Among Giants, the 1999 ITV miniseries Oliver Twist, and the 1999 historical drama Topsy-Turvy.

By 1999, Serkis’s numerous television and stage performances had earned him the notice of director Peter Jackson, who had begun shooting The Lord of the Rings film trilogy in his native New Zealand. Based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels, The Lord of the Rings tells the story of the omnipotent One Ring and the fight to save the land of Middle Earth from the dark lord Sauron. Jackson invited Serkis to provide the voice and movement of the creature Gollum, who has been driven mad by his desire for the Ring. Serkis agreed to play the character using motion capture, a groundbreaking new film technique that allowed the digital Gollum graphics to match Serkis’s live-action performances.

Serkis appeared in all three films in the trilogy but was featured more prominently in the second and third films, The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003). His performances were critically acclaimed and earned Serkis numerous award nominations. The popular films introduced Serkis to an international audience, and he was soon in high demand in the mainstream film industry.

In 2005 Serkis reunited with Jackson for King Kong, a remake of the celebrated 1933 film of the same name. Again using the motion-capture technique, Serkis portrays a giant gorilla who is taken from his island home to New York City. The film was well received, with special praise going to Serkis for his portrayal of the digital Kong.

For his role as Rigaud in the 2008 miniseries Little Dorrit, Serkis was nominated for an Emmy Award for outstanding supporting actor in a miniseries. That same year, he received a supporting-actor Golden Globe nomination for his performance in the biopic Longford. He was also critically acclaimed for his performance as rock musician Ian Dury in the 2010 biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. Serkis then took on the role of Caesar, a chimpanzee who begins a revolution against humans, in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011). Serkis was highly praised for his motion-capture performance.

After lending his voice to the role of Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg’s 2011 animated film adaptation of The Adventures of Tintin, Serkis reprised his role as Gollum for Jackson’s trilogy of films based on Tolkien’s 1937 novel The Hobbit, beginning with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012).

In the mid-to-late 2010s, Serkis built on his prior success with film franchises. He reprised his performance as Caesar for the Planet of the Apes prequel series in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017); portrayed the villainous Supreme Leader Snoke in the hit Star Wars films The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017); and played Ulysses Klaue in the Marvel Studios superhero films Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Black Panther (2018).

In 2022, Serkis took on the role of Alfred, the faithful butler to Bruce Wayne/Batman in the film The Batman. That same year, he also had a recurring role on the Disney+ Star Wars series, Andor.

Serkis also branched into directing during this period. His debut in the director's chair was 2017's Breathe, a well-received historical drama about an adventurous couple facing disability. The following year, he acted in and directed Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, an adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling classic The Jungle Book for Netflix that blends live action with critically acclaimed computer animation. However, Mowgli enjoyed a mixed reception with critics and audiences alike. In 2021, Serkis directed the superhero film Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a sequel to the 2018 film Venom, which focused on an alien being that enters into an unlikely symbiotic partnership with a human.

In 2024, the film studio Warner Bros. announced that Serkis would be directing and starring in a new Lord of the Rings-based film, Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum. Serkis will be reprising his iconic role of Gollum in the film, which is scheduled for a 2026 release.

Impact

After establishing an illustrious career on the stage, Serkis transformed himself in the 2000s into a highly sought-after motion-capture performer, breathing life into such digital characters as Gollum, King Kong, and Caesar the chimpanzee. His unique ability to infuse these computer creations with convincing emotions and compelling facial expressions has earned him widespread acclaim.

Personal Life

Serkis lives in North London with his wife, actor Lorraine Ashbourne. They have three children, Ruby, Sonny, and Louis.

Bibliography

"Andy Serkis." IMDb, 2024, www.imdb.com/name/nm0785227/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.

Garratt, Sheryl. “Andy Serkis: From Middle Earth to Movie Mogul.” Telegraph, 13 Dec. 2012, www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/9723686/Andy-Serkis-from-Middle-Earth-to-movie-mogul.html. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.

Hattenstone, Simon. “Andy Serkis: From Gollum to Ian Dury.” Guardian, 1 Jan. 2010, www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jan/02/interview-andy-serkis. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.

Maas, Jennifer. "Warner Bros. to Release New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movie ‘The Hunt for Gollum’ in 2026, Peter Jackson to Produce and Andy Serkis to Direct." Variety, 9 May 2024, variety.com/2024/film/news/lord-of-the-rings-movie-2026-release-warner-bros-1235997102/. Accessed 24 Sept. 2024.

Sacks, Ethan. “Andy Serkis Builds on His Career-Defining Role as Grotesque but Oddly Likable Gollum in ‘The Hobbit.’” Daily News, 13 Dec. 2012, www.nydailynews.com/2012/12/13/andy-serkis-builds-on-his-career-defining-role-as-grotesque-but-oddly-likable-gollum-in-the-hobbit/. Accessed 19 Sept. 2024.