Andy Serkis: Basically we're puppeteers and if you're there and you're...

Be magnificent. Life’s short. Get out there. You can do it. Everyone can do it. Everyone.

Andy Serkis

you-can-do-it magnificent can-do

It's really up to the acting community to be willing to be educated about what performance capture is in order to fully appreciate it as acting. It's not a type of acting, but rather the use of technology to harness an actor's performance and translate it into an ape, another animal, or an avatar of some kind.

Andy Serkis

appreciate technology animal

I don't see a difference between playing a performance capture role and a live action role, they're just characters to me at the end of the day and I'm an actor who wants to explore those characters in fantastically written scripts. The only caveat is a good story is a good character.

Andy Serkis

the-end-of-the-day differences character

When you start to do research into gorillas or any kind of apes, if you're going to play them, that's one of the biggest misconceptions. And when I did Kong, you're not doing gorilla movements, you're not doing ape movements, you're looking for a personality. It's like saying okay I'm going to do human movements.

Andy Serkis

research personality play

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.

Andy Serkis

jobs character hands

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.

Andy Serkis

gorillas design made

As long as you have the acting chops and the desire to get inside a character, you can play anything.

Andy Serkis

play character long

There's this whole grey area seemingly every time it's talked about animators and who takes ultimate responsibility for the characters [of the Planet of the apes] but without question and I'll go down saying this year after year, these characters are authored by what we do on set. They are not authored by animators.

Andy Serkis

responsibility character years

Every age has its storytelling form, and video gaming is a huge part of our culture. You can ignore or embrace video games and imbue them with the best artistic quality. People are enthralled with video games in the same way as other people love the cinema or theatre.

Andy Serkis

age games people

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.

Andy Serkis

casting agents voice

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.

Andy Serkis

climbing passion mean

I love, first of all, reading and discovering what the common perception is and then trying to figure out... well, how does your life cross over into that character, or what's an angle on this that might challenge the status quo? It's just a great journey as well as an education. You're constantly being educated - it's like I'm back at school and making up for lost time.

Andy Serkis

reading character school

Motion capture is exactly what it says: it's physical moves, whereas performance capture is the entire performance - including your facial performance. If you're doing, say, martial arts for a video game, that is motion capture. This is basically another way of recording an actor's performance: audio, facial and physical.

Andy Serkis

games art moving

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.

Andy Serkis

space personality character

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

Andy Serkis

long-time writing long

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.

Andy Serkis

father art son

When you come out of the other end of a long process, working with a character [you realize] this character has really shaped my ideas.

Andy Serkis

character long ideas

I'm definitely moving more towards directing now.

Andy Serkis

moving

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.

Andy Serkis

voice play character

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..."

Andy Serkis

stars eye song

Basically we're puppeteers and if you're there and you're in the character, the puppet is going to look good. It's going to breath life and I think once they find out how to trust this system, you just forget about it and just perform, then it's just second nature, it just becomes easy.