Andy Serkis has admitted he wasn’t exactly bowled over when he first learned he was being put forward for Lord Of The Rings.
The Bafta-nominated actor’s performance as Gollum is undoubtedly a stand-out in the Lord Of The Rings franchise, and helped pioneer a new way of bringing motion capture technology to the big screen.
However, Andy has revealed that when he was first told the details of the role, he didn’t exactly have the best reaction.
Speaking at a Fan Expo panel in San Francisco, Screen Rant reported that Andy told the audience: “When I was first approached to play the role, it was explained to me by my agent when I first spoke to them on the phone about it. They said, ‘Look, they’re making this little film down in New Zealand called Lord of the Rings, and they want to see you for a voice for a digital character.’
“And I was like, ‘What? There must be a dozen good roles in that movie. Can you not get me up for something decent?’. And they said, ‘Well, it is Gollum’. And I said, ‘That’s a decent role. Yeah, okay, alright, I’m listening’.”
He continued: “Originally, it was explained to me that it was just going to be the voice. And then when I met Peter Jackson and auditioned, he explained that they were just on the verge of trying out this new technology called motion capture, and that he wanted an actor to be on set to act with the other actors.
“Because up to that point, many CGI characters were only represented by a tennis ball on a stick, and the actors had to pretend that they were having a relationship with it.
“Gollum, as many people know, drives a lot of the scenes and drives the wedges between Frodo and Sam, and it’s all about the interaction. He wanted an actor to play that character. Motion capture aside, I just approached it like any other role, getting into the psychology and the physicality and then the voice. And none of those could be separated for me. I can’t just come up with a voice; it doesn’t work like that for me as an actor.”
The Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes star revealed: “So, I started to think about the guilt that Gollum felt from killing his cousin and how that guilt was trapped, and I decided it was trapped in his throat. Then that kind of involuntary action helps propel the sound of Gollum.”
Andy played Gollum in all three Lord Of The Rings movies, reprising the role in the prequel The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and various video games.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Andy will reunite with filmmaker Peter Jackson for a new spin-off centred around Gollum, which he will also direct.