Andy Serkis has had leading roles in mega-blockbusters that have earned over $2.5 billion worldwide. He's the main character in a major movie opening this weekend, and this winter he'll appear in a new 3D adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. And yet, odds are good that if you bumped into him on the street you'd have no idea he was a movie star. Because usually you never see his face.
Serkis is one of the preeminent actors in the field of "performance capture." That's the process where an actor's movements are recorded in three dimensions and used to create the animation of a fully digital character. Serkis broke new ground when he portrayed the computer-generated Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" films, and he is taking the form to another level in the new film "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."
A native of London, Andy Serkis started his acting career on the stage. He appeared on British television throughout the 1990s, and scored the occasional film role like in Mike Leigh's Oscar-winning "Topsy-Turvy." But his career took off in a new and unexpected direction when Peter Jackson cast him in his "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
Serkis was originally hired for just a three-week job providing the voice of the animated Gollum. That turned into a five-year long endeavor, as Serkis actually created the character's movement and expressions. To make it work, Serkis would be on set in costume to act out every scene with costars Elijah Wood and Sean Astin. Then the other actors would shoot the scene without Serkis to give a clean background where the animation could later be layered. Later, Serkis would recreate his performance on a separate motion capture stage wearing a suit covered with reflective dots that infrared cameras would turn into a 3D "puppet" in the computer.
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