Gollum, King Kong, Caesar. A common denominator here is Andy Serkis, the brilliant English actor best known for his performance-capture roles. He’s worked with Hollywood’s finest filmmakers, from Steven Spielberg (The Adventures of Tintin) to George Lucas (The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi). In 2018, he portrayed the character of Baloo in his self-directed film, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle. He even directed Marvel’s hit sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), which is set in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.
Serkis is one of the highest-grossing actors of all time, and his film work in motion capture has been critically acclaimed. He has received an Empire Award and two Saturn Awards for his motion-capture acting. In 2020, Serkis received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema. He has also won a Daytime Emmy Award for the series The Letter for the King (2020). He’s still waiting on Oscar, however, which he perhaps should have won early on in the 21st century.
Seguing from Marvel to DC, Serkis was a standout with his supporting turn in The Batman. Speaking of the Caped Crusader, we created a narrowed-down list of Serkis’ other top-notch performances over the years. Here’s a closer look.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
5 The Batman
Warner Bros.
Matt Reeves’ The Batman is now in theaters, introducing a new cast of characters bringing to life the various heroes and villains of The Batverse. Among them is Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth, the longtime butler, confidant, and father-figure to Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne. It’s very clear that this Alfred has had quite the history, but there’s so much about the character that’s left unexplored in the film. What led to this Alfred getting to this point?
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Serkis opened up about his incarnation of Alfred. The actor saw the character as someone whose military background still affected the way Alfred carries himself, a stark contrast to Bruce Wayne’s personality: “Alfred is very much out of sorts. Being a military man, he is used to rules and regulations, structure and precision. I wanted him to have that military solidity in the way he dressed and carried himself, which is ruffled with Bruce’s nihilism and refusal to listen to him anymore. It’s a relationship built on shifting sands.”
4 Black Panther
Walt Disney Studios
After the events of Captain America: Civil War, Prince T’Challa returns home to the reclusive, technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda to serve as his country’s new king. However, T’Challa soon finds that he’s challenged for the throne from factions within his own country. When two foes conspire to destroy Wakanda, the hero known as Black Panther must team up with a C.I.A. agent and Wakandan special forces to prevent Wakanda from being dragged into a world war.
Black Panther stars the late Chadwick Boseman alongside an incredibly stacked cast including Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis. Fun fact: Wesley Snipes had planned to make a Black Panther film in the 1990s, but the project didn’t come to fruition. In the 2018 film, Serkis plays Ulysses Klaue, a South African black-market arms dealer, smuggler and gangster who is allied with Killmonger. Serkis spoke to Collider about the character, who had appeared in an earlier Avengers film:
“Klaue appears in Age of Ultron, and the way that all happened was, they were working with The Imaginarium, which is my performance-capture studio. We were all working and consulting back on Ultron, working with James Spader and Mark Ruffalo and initiating them into the process of motion-capture because they were both using performance-capture. We were providing services for that. Then, Joss Whedon said, ‘Hey, this is crazy, why don’t you come and be in the show?’ And I thought, ‘Oh, alright, that’d be fun.’ So that happened and then, of course, when this came along, I knew that he was part of the Black Panther story. It’s just really great being back.”
3 King Kong
Universal Pictures
The story of King Kong is a classic and the image of a monstrous ape towering over the city in the original 1933 film is legendary. Peter Jackson, the Academy Award-winning director responsible for The Lord of the Rings franchise, The Lovely Bones, and Heavenly Creatures directed the 2005 King Kong remake. Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Naomi Watts, Andy Serkis, and Colin Hanks star in this extremely successful film that ended up grossing over $500 million at the box office and has an 84% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Serkis plays the titular role, which proved to be more challenging than we might expect, despite the CGI and other special effects that surrounded his performance. Serkis spoke to MovieWeb upon the film’s release and compared the Kong role to his iconic Lord of the Rings character:
“Immensely more difficult because so much of Gollum was his voice and the way he spoke. The character emanated from his - he’s called Gollum because of the way he sounds; the physicality came out of the voice. I had to get myself into certain physical positions to make that voice really work. He explains himself to other people, his predicament, and he talks to himself in very rich dialogue from talking - from Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh. And that was one of the biggest challenges, how we were going to convey that range of emotion with a so-called mute character like Kong. Of course, once I started researching gorillas I found out that they used a lexicon of vocalizations; that was a big key into it. You found out that they sing, they chuckle, they have very specific ways of communicating within a group and just the breath, actually.”
2 Planet of the Apes Trilogy
20th Century Fox
Just when we thought the Planet of the Apes franchise was fizzling out, Matt Reeves’ epic 2014 sequel hit the masses. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes focuses on a growing nation of genetically evolved apes led by Caesar (Serkis) who is threatened by a band of human survivors of the devastating virus unleashed a decade earlier. They reach a fragile peace, but it proves short-lived, as both sides are brought to the brink of a war that will determine who will emerge as Earth’s dominant species.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes features an all-star cast that also includes Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell and Kodi Smit-McPhee. It was also a box office success, grossing over $710 million worldwide against a $170 million budget, making it the highest-grossing film in the series. It even received an Oscar nod for Best Visual Effects.
1 The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit Trilogies
New Line Cinema
And then there’s Gollum, the role which should have earned Serkis at least an Oscar nomination. The Lord of the Rings has been relevant in cinema since the early 2000s and will most likely not be going away anytime soon, given its popularity and abundant fanbase. The Lord of the Rings has given audiences some of the most memorable moments and incredible characters that have defined a generation of fantasy filmgoers, akin to the vast array of great characters in franchises like Harry Potter, Star Wars, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
One of which is Gollum, who — as revealed in The Return of the King’s chilling opening sequence — was originally a man named Sméagol who was driven mad once he got his hands on the ring. The scenes throughout this film, as well as The Two Towers, where Gollum talks to himself display Serkis’ true acting talents. It’s evident that he’s a tour de force, whether his character is computer-generated or not. Serkis later reprised his role in The Hobbit.
