What was the plan if acting didn’t work out?
Andy Serkis: I never, ever intended to be an actor. I actually started off studying art. Literally, from the age of six or seven, I was given my first set of paints, and I started painting, and that really became what I wanted to do, up until the age of 18. I went to college, and it was only when I was in college, in Lancaster University, in the north of England… In the first year, you had to do another course, and I wasn’t even aware of that. I was going to study visual arts, and I thought that’s what I was going to do. And no, you had to do this first-year, other course, and there happened to be a Theater Studies department, and so I started designing props and making sets and posters for the shows and using my artistic skills, thinking that that would help with my Visual Art degree. Then, I started acting in plays – very small roles – and then they gradually got bigger and bigger. And then, by the end of the first year, I played a part that was a really significant role, and that literally changed my life. […] When I went to Art college, my parents were horrified. They were horrified. And then, at the end of the first year, I said, “It’s ok, I’m not going to do art anymore – I’m going to become an actor!” And they’re like… [mimics his parents’ reaction, audience laughs]. Silence on the other end of the phone. Total, total silence. They were terrified for me. They just thought, “What is he doing?” It took them a long time to figure out, actually, that it wasn’t too bad of a profession.
On misconceptions about motion-capture acting:
AS: There’s a whole misunderstanding about what motion-caption – or “performance-capture,” as it is known now… Motion-capture is born out of the medical industry, actually. It was a way of tracking injury – tracking, like, if you’d broken your ankle, it could track your gate – put markers on the broken points and see how your recovery, your rehabilitation was working. Then, it started to be used in the video game world, to track athletes’ and martial artists’ movements, and so on. So, that’s why it was called “motion-capture” – it was literally capturing physical motion. But when we started using it in the film industry, it became, very quickly, “performance-capture” because it was allowing an actor to see an avatar version of what they were doing on a screen. The very first time I actually had the opportunity of working on a character using the technology, [I] could lift my arm up, and then I would see the avatar character lift his arm up. It was a huge kind of epiphany for me that this was a way of becoming the marionette and the puppeteer at the same time. You’re driving this digital image so that it copies everything that you’re doing. When facial-capture came along, which was the next stage – a crucial stage – of becoming “performance-capture” – that was literally tracking every single facial expression. And then, when you’re capturing audio and physicality and [facial expressions], all at the same time, that was when it became “performance-capture,” and that happened over the course of maybe three or four years.
The moderator mentions how early Disney movies used to bring in live actors for the character motion, then animate over them.
AS: It’s kind of a more-21st-Century version of that. That was called “rotoscoping.” For instance, [the character] Snow White, as you may know, was performed by an actress who danced [for the dancing scenes], which was then, frame by frame, drawn, and then those movements became what drove the animation.
On who he feels has influenced his career:
AS: I’ve been inspired by countless actors [and] directors, over the years. […] I’ve been a huge admirer of Charlie Chaplin, a huge admirer of Lon Cheney and Charles Laughton… Over the course of the years, you realize that the craft of acting goes back such a long way. As actors and performers, […] you pay homage to previous… If you’re film-directing, you’re looking at other people’s shots, you’re looking at other people’s… things that you’ve really committed to, emotionally. So, in terms of filmmakers, Martin Scorsese’s pictures… I remember seeing “Apocalypse Now” when I was 14 years old, and it was the thing that made me want to become a filmmaker. It was such a powerful movie. You sort of end up being a magpie along the road in your career. You end up taking little bits from here and there. Your taste is a sort of sum of so many different, other, previous, brilliant artists’ work. Whether you’re conscious of it or not, you do. That becomes your version, as it were – the culmination, the accumulation of all of those things becomes how you want to express or tell a story.
Reflecting on groundbreaking developments in cinema:
AS: You think back to films like “The General” – Buster Keaton – where some of the most extraordinary stunts were created, for real – "Ben Hur,” all of those films. And now, of course, we live in a world where so much can be created digitally, and there’s a lot more safety, as a result. But I look at those films in complete awe, in terms of the management and the skill and how those big stunts were pulled off.
On whether he does any good vocal impressions:
AS: I recently did a series of readings of Tolkien’s books… [Audience cheers] The books… It would be fair to say that I channeled some of the actors. [Audience laughs] I’m not an impersonator. I’m actually not a good mimic. My wife, actually, is a very, very good mimic. That’s a fantastic skill, and I really admire it in people. I love people who can really just get a tonality absolutely right, just by observation. Apart from that experience of sort of channeling people, I’ve had to play people in the past […] – and, again, we can’t talk about the specifics [because of the then-ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike] – but I’ve had to play real people in the past, and I’ve studied them. It’s interesting, when you’re playing someone in history or someone who’s existed, because you have to find a way of making them your own, so that you’re not just an impersonation, because that would be wrong and not really servicing the story that you’re telling. So, you find a way of bringing them to you and meeting that character so that it feels real to you, vocally, and, [for] the audience, they shouldn’t have to imagine that it is anything but that character. So, actually, it’s a meeting of you and that character.
On where he considers “home” to be:
AS: Basically, really, whenever all my family is together – wherever it is in the world, wherever we are – as long as we are all together, that is “home” for me. […] We’ve reached that phase of our lives, my wife and I, where all of our kids are just leaving home. It’s such a strange, bizarre… I’m sure many, many people who are listening here have gone through this at some time… but it’s this curiously, kind of wonderful thing because you’ve done part of your job – your job as a parent never ends, of course – but they’ve gone off and started to make their own lives and live their own lives. You let them out and let them out, and now they’re gone. And yet, you want them to come back! It’s this curious thing. It’s quite delicious, being at home when it’s just the two of us, and then you think, “Aww,” and you think about your kids all the time. And then they come home, and it’s just, like, “Go away. Get married.” [Audience laughs] It’s this amazing sort of push and pull between “They’ve got to go off and do their own thing” and “Um, you know, they haven’t texted me for four days.” It’s a very curious, curious thing. “Home” really is when we’re all together.
On his favorite books when he was younger:
AS: Some of the very early books that I read were The Phantom Tollbooth. I love that book. I love that book. The Hobbit was one of the first books I ever read, and Animal Farm, which is one of my favorite books. I suppose they were all that had a fable or a fairy tale or had fantasy elements – not surprisingly – but were fables – strong stories with underlying messages. When you first start reading books which have adult themes but they’re for young people to… they work on lots of different levels… those are the sorts of books that I love to read, I suppose.
On whether he collected anything as a kid:
AS: I loved Spider-Man and I love Batman and “Joe 90” and all the “Thunderbirds” puppets. I had connected models of all the monsters. I had those kits – those model kits – of Godzilla and King Kong, all those amazing model kits – Mummy and Frankenstein. One of the things my mom had… she collected dolls from all around the world. We sort of travelled around quite a bit, when I was growing up, because my father was Iraqi, and he lived in Baghdad, and my sisters all grew up in Baghdad. When I was born, my mom decided she wanted to come back to England, but we used to go back and forth to Iraq, when my dad was working, all the time. So, she used to travel a lot around the world, and she used to collect dolls. I was quite fascinated by this collection of dolls from, literally, all around the world, where my parents travelled. I think it left a marked impression on me because I’ve always loved figures and making stop-motion, really short movies with figures. It’s very strange to get to a point in your life where you start to see figures of [yourself] – that’s kind of weird – all of the characters you’ve been involved in. But it is fun. Like today, you’ve all brought them along for me to signs, and that’s kind of a strange thing because it’s like the stories that you’ve been involved in, having another life as a character that means something to you that you bring back to the actor that’s played that character… It’s a very interesting circle, for sure.
On rumors that he would drink a special juice to help him do the voice of one of his most iconic characters:
AS: People think of me as a “voice actor,” and, actually, I’m really not a voice actor because the voice is a part of creating a character. The voice is linked to physicality and the voice is linked to psychology, so I never think of myself as someone who just does a voice or picks a voice. It’s always connected to the way a character moves or thinks or feels. It’s an interesting perception that people have. But, that aside, the “juice” side of things, I do, when I’m working and it’s a particularly demanding role – which, will eventually, if you don’t lubricate, then it’s going to cause you damage… So I did create – for a certain character which we can’t talk about [because of the strike] – a juice that’s made lemon, honey and ginger, and so on and so forth, which I just kind of had to drink constantly, just to keep things going, really. And that is, yeah. And it was named after the character that I played, which we can’t talk about – it was what I called that juice. It was the “Hmmmmm” juice.
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