Lord Of The Rings' Andy Serkis Recalls Being Ridiculed For Playing Gollum

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Actor Andy Serkis is famous for, among other things, his incredible talent for motion-capture characters. One of his first high-profile roles of that type was Gollum from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings series. It was a celebrated performance and helped propel Serkis to other motion-capture roles, including Caesar from Planet of the Apes. But not everyone was a fan of Serkis’ motion-capture roles, including Gollum, all those years ago.

Serkis told GQ that he had “the role of the evangelist” for motion-capture roles as Gollum on The Lord of the Rings, though he gave credit to the characters Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars and Tom Hanks’ character in The Polar Express as examples of motion-capture characters before Gollum. For The Lord of the Rings, Serkis recalls people misunderstanding what he was doing, and also making fun of him for doing it.

“When Lord of the Rings originally came out, there would be literally people who would say, ‘Who is that character? Is he a dancer? Is he a contortionist?'” Serkis said. “Older actors were like, ‘You wouldn’t catch me dead doing motion capture. It’s the end of our profession.’ I literally heard someone saying that. There were lots of jokes about it; you know, Saturday Night Live things with people in suits with ping pong balls attached. It was ripe for ridiculing–and rightly so.”

Serkis opened a performance capture studio called The Imaginarium in 2011 that does work on the kinds of motion-capture characters that Serkis helped make famous. After The Lord of the Rings, Serkis portrayed Caesar in Planet of the Apes, Supreme Leader Snoke in the new Star Wars series, King Kong in King Kong, and Baloo in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle.

Beyond motion-capture roles, Serkis is an accomplished traditional actor. He recently starred in The Batman as Alfred and on the Star Wars TV series Andor as Kino.

As for The Lord of the Rings film series, WB/New Line just announced plans to develop additional films in the fantasy series.

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