‘The Hunt for Gollum’ Star Andy Serkis Has Stopped Preaching About Performance Capture, and Gollum Is the Reason He Still Cares

Few actors have spent as long defending their craft as Andy Serkis. Since he first played Gollum in Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy in the early 2000s, the actor has been known as the face of performance capture. It’s a technique that records an actor’s voice, face and body movements all at once, yet it has long struggled to shake the idea that it’s something other than real acting.

That debate has followed him through a string of digital roles, including Kong in ‘King Kong’ and Caesar in the ‘Planet of the Apes’ trilogy. Empire once pointed out how strange it seemed that John Hurt earned a best actor Oscar nomination for ‘The Elephant Man’ while Serkis never received one for ‘The Two Towers’. Serkis himself admitted back in 2011 that he was a bit evangelical about the subject.

Now he says he’s let a lot of that go. In a new interview with The Sunday Times, shared widely by Variety, Serkis explained that he never really cared about being linked to his digitally altered characters because the technology is so misunderstood. He admitted that he used to be evangelical about it, spending hours explaining why performance capture is acting while watching people’s eyes glaze over, but decided life is too short and calmed down.

Serkis still believes in the craft; he just isn’t fighting so hard to convince people. These days, he says, his attitude is simply that if people get it, that’s great. He also offered a clear way to think about the work.

Serkis argued that performances like Gollum are authored by an actor, much like a prosthetics team transformed John Hurt in ‘The Elephant Man’. In his view, some people simply find a performance under a physical mask easier to understand than one under a digital mask.

Andy Serkis thinks motion capture technology is "misunderstood": "This technology is so misunderstood. I used to be evangelical. I’ve talked for hours about how performance capture is acting and watched eyes glaze over, but life’s too short. I calmed down. Now I just think, ‘If you get it? Great.’ Performances like Gollum are authored by an actor in the same way a prosthetics team engineered John Hurt in ‘The Elephant Man.’ But, for some reason, a performance underneath a physical mask is more understandable to some than this, which is a digital mask.” (Source: @Variety)

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The timing of his comments matters, because the conversation has shifted toward artificial intelligence. Peter Jackson said in May that the growing debate over AI in film is one reason Serkis hasn’t won awards for Gollum, and likely never will. Jackson called that unfair, stressing that Serkis’s work is a fully human-generated performance.

Serkis has drawn the same line. He told Variety in July that AI can’t currently replicate the authored performance that performance capture records, and said it was being used on his new film only to de-age cast members. He also argued that performance capture work should be judged by the same standards as any other acting.

The new trailer for ‘THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RINGS OF POWER’ Season 3 has been released. Releasing November 11 on Prime Video. https://t.co/YRatcjauR2

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All of this comes as Serkis returns to the role that started it all. He is directing and starring in ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’, which is filming in New Zealand with much of the crew from the earlier trilogies. Jackson is producing alongside longtime collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens.

The story explores Gollum’s psychology and history, following Gandalf’s growing determination to uncover the truth about the ring Bilbo found. Ian McKellen has confirmed that Gandalf and Elijah Wood’s Frodo will return, and the film is set for release in December 2027.

The 62-year-old has also admitted the demands of playing Gollum again have kept him up at night. It’s a striking turn for a role he initially thought would only involve 3 weeks of voiceover work.

Serkis is also reflecting on his career in print. His first memoir, ‘My Pressures: The Bizarrely True Story of Andy Serkis’, was published this month, inviting fans behind the scenes of his most famous franchises.

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