I think Caesar is one of the most empathetic characters that I've played. I think that's the key to a successful leadership. Being able to keep your ears open at all times.
— Andy Serkis
I grew up with 'Star Wars' and was a massive fan of the original films.
You never really know why you become an actor: it's a visceral thing, an emotional thing.
Both my parents are Catholic and staunch believers. I'm not a Catholic now, but I still carry part of it with me.
Before I became an actor, I was a visual artist, and I've always hankered for the storytelling behind the camera.
When you do animation - well, straightforward animation, although it's not straightforward - the voice for a character or something, they're always singular experiences, really.
The reason that some motion-capture films don't work is if the scripts are not good, and the characters aren't engaging, then you don't believe in the journey, and you're not connected to it. It's not the technology's fault.
Certain gorillas are more evolved than certain human beings I know.
I think I have a lot of internal energy, which does need to come out.
As I started to research gorillas, I began to understand that they're all totally individual and idiosyncratic, and they have their own personalities.
Originally, I thought, 'Gollum's such a fantastic character, why are you doing him CG? Surely you need to be able to humanise him as much as possible - he's so full of pathos and real emotion.'
I think that Gollum is really the character who is a very human character, and he's very flawed, like most humans are, and has good and bad sides.
The great thing about performance capture is you can go off, and then, without changing costume, you can become another character.
In performance capture roles, it's not a committee of animators that author the role, it's the actor. I think that's a significant thing for people to understand.
Actors' performances in films are enhanced in a million different ways, down to the choice of camera shot by the director - whether it's in slow motion or whether it's quick cut - or... the choice of music behind the close-up or the costume that you're wearing or the makeup.
The art of transformation is a very important thing to me, and I always believe I can say something more truthful through characters that are further away from me.
If you're in a motion-capture studio, you have spherical, reflective markers, which are picked up by cameras that emit infrared - it reflects it, and then the cameras pick up the data.
My very, very first moment on set on 'Lord of the Rings' in 2000 was me in a lycra suit, six and a half thousand feet up on a mountain in New Zealand, standing in front of 250 crew who were all wondering what I was doing - myself included.
Middle-earth is a universe I know very well.
My father was interested in justice, always working for people who needed to be supported.
I love the ability to transform because that, for me, is a liberation.
If 'The Hobbit' happens - and there's reason to believe that it will - then I think I'm in with a chance! Gollum is very much part of 'The Hobbit,' after all.
It has been great portraying Gollum, but it will be great to see my face on screen for a change.
If I hear someone say something, and they're 100 per cent about it, then it's almost inevitable that I'll take the opposite view. I guess I feel at odds with things like society. Absolutism is always a trigger for me.
I've always been really in touch with my primal instincts. In my profession, you have to be.
I enjoy high-speed about-turns in thought.
When I'm working on the scripts or working with the other actors or rehearsing with the director, and when the director is cutting the movie, and we've shot the scene, the director is not looking at the visual effects.
You could go so wrong with a 'Planet of the Apes' reboot; you could make it melodramatic, you could make it campy, you could fall into so many traps with it.
A lot of people have asked me to do answer phone messages for them.
I think the actors in 'Greystoke' were amazing. They had a really good performance coach called Peter Elliott who's, of his time, one of the greatest simian performance coaches for actors.
Be magnificent. Life's short. Get out there. You can do it. Everyone can do it. Everyone.
I think I spend most of my time not living in reality, actually.
I do love nature, but I don't suppose I'd spent more time in zoos as a child than anyone else!
Nowadays, there's no such thing as a stable job.
J.J. Abrams and I met, and we just had this incredible kind of vibe between us.
Did you happen to catch the film I did between 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Kong?' It was a nice little Jennifer Garner comedy, '13 Going on 30,' and I play her boss. In my big scene, I get to moonwalk - pretty well, I thought - to Michael Jackson.
Our family were outsiders, and I've always had a sense of the outsider, the underdog, and a strong sense of justice towards people who are excluded.
You'll very rarely find that you can enhance a performance to give it a real emotional centre and truth... after the fact.
I think when actors run away from their work that they're slightly crazy, really!
People find it hard to get their heads around nominating a computer-generated character, but every time you see Gollum on the screen, that's me who is acting up there - even if it is behind a mass of pixels - and it's my voice you hear.
I do have anger management issues. Not clinical. Probably no more than most people.
Thank God for Skype!
Looking back, when I was Gollum, I suppose I did break the mold to a certain extent. I'm proud, and very thrilled, to be a part of that.
I've been told that some guy wrote something like, 'Andy Serkis does everything, animators do nothing.' Of course I never in a million years said that, wouldn't ever say that. It's not within my understanding of filmmaking to ever say anything like that.
I spent a lot of time on my own working out the physical vocabulary for how Gollum moved. As I say, I drew on a lot of Tolkein's descriptions of how he moves, but also the conceptual artist sketches.
I would love to direct an 'Apes' movie. It would be in the spirit of where I'm going with my career - avatars played by actors to say something about the human condition.
Any sort of role requires a certain amount of research and embodiment of the character and psychological investigation.
Actors' performances do not stand alone in any film, live action or whatever.
People used to say, 'Andy Serkis lent his movements to Gollum,' and now they say, 'Andy Serkis played Caesar.' That's a significant leap.
The fact of the matter is I have done so many parts.
