Andrew Clement Serkis (born 20 April 1964) is an English actor and director. He is best known for his critically acclaimed roles comprising motion capture acting, animation, and voice acting for computer-generated characters such as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), King Kong in the eponymous 2005 film, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot series (2011–2017), Captain Haddock / Sir Francis Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin (2011), Baloo in his self-directed film Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018) and Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars sequel trilogy films The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017).
Serkis' film work in motion capture has been critically acclaimed. He has received various accolades including a BAFTA Award, an Emmy Award, an Empire Award, two Actor Awards and two Saturn Awards. He earned a BAFTA and a Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of serial killer Ian Brady in the television film Longford (2006) and was nominated for another BAFTA for his portrayal of new wave and punk rock musician Ian Dury in the biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010). In 2020, Serkis received the BAFTA Award for Outstanding British Contribution To Cinema. In 2021, he won a Daytime Emmy Award for the series The Letter for the King (2020).
Serkis portrayed Ulysses Klaue in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Black Panther (2018), as well as the Disney+ series What If...? (2021). He also played Alfred Pennyworth in The Batman (2022) and Kino Loy in the Star Wars Disney+ series Andor (2022). Serkis has his own production company and motion capture workshop, The Imaginarium in London, which he used for Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle. He made his directorial debut with Imaginarium's 2017 film Breathe and also directed Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021).
Early life and education
Andrew Clement Serkis was born on 20 April 1964 in Ruislip in Middlesex (now Greater London). He grew up in both Ruislip and Baghdad, Iraq. His mother, Lylie Weech, was half English and half Iraqi, and taught disabled children; his father, Clement Serkis, was an Armenian from Iraq and a gynaecologist. His ancestors' original Armenian surname was Serkisian. His father often worked abroad in the Middle East, while Serkis and his siblings were raised in Britain, with regular holidays in the Levantine cities of Tyre, Sidon, Damascus, and also Baghdad. His parents were both devoutly Catholic.
Serkis was educated at St Benedict's School, Ealing. He studied visual arts and theatre as part of his degree at Lancaster University and graduated in 1985. Serkis was a member of The County College and part of the student radio station Bailrigg FM. He joined the Nuffield Studio, getting involved in designing and producing plays.
Having agreed to perform in a couple of productions towards the end of his first year, Serkis played the lead role in Barrie Keeffe's play Gotcha as a rebellious teenager holding a teacher hostage. As a result, he changed his major subject to acting, constructing his Independent Studies Degree around acting and set design, studying Konstantin Stanislavski and Bertolt Brecht, and including minor modules in art and visual graphics. In his final year at Lancaster he adapted Raymond Briggs's graphic novel The Tin-Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman, a satire about the Falklands War, as a one-man show, which he performed to acclaim.
Career
In his third year at university, Serkis joined the backstage team at the local Duke's Playhouse to earn his Equity card. On graduating, although advised to take a one-year post-graduate acting course, he joined Dukes as an actor. Under director Jonathan Petherbridge, who used workshops based on the methods of Augusto Boal, he spent 18 months acting in a broad range of productions from Brecht, Shakespeare and modern British playwrights.
After 16 months, and having gained his Equity card, Serkis joined a series of touring companies, including productions of: Bouncers opposite Hull Truck; Florizel in The Winter's Tale; and the fool in King Lear with director Max Stafford-Clark. In the early 1990s he settled in London, and took a role in April De Angelis's Hush (Royal Court) as Dogboy. Also the Royal Court Theatre's production of Mojo, and Wilson Milam's production of Hurlyburly (1997) at the Queen's Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, with Rupert Graves and David Tennant. Serkis also developed a career in television, appearing in small roles such as Greville in an episode of The Darling Buds of May (1992) and a criminal called Maxwell in an episode of Pie in the Sky (1994). Serkis joined director Mike Leigh's ensemble for two film productions, and appeared in the romantic comedy Loop (1997) alongside Susannah York. He played Dennis in a 1997 Radio 3 broadcast of Loot by Orton, repeated in 2017. Serkis portrayed Victorian choreographer John D'Auban in Topsy-Turvy, a 1999 film about Gilbert and Sullivan's creation of The Mikado. In 1999, Serkis played Bill Sikes in ITV's adaptation of Oliver Twist. He appeared alongside Sacha Baron Cohen in The Jolly Boys' Last Stand in 2000.
Serkis first came to wide public notice for his performance as Sméagol / Gollum, in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003), for which he provided motion-capture movements and voice for the CGI character. His work on The Lord of the Rings started a debate on the legitimacy of CGI-assisted acting. Producer Barrie M. Osborne campaigned for Serkis to have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, as his voice, body language and facial expressions were used. The marketing director of New Line Cinema, Russell Schwartz, had likewise compared Serkis's motion capture presence to John Hurt winning Best Actor while wearing a latex mask in The Elephant Man.
Serkis has performed motion-capture work in several other films, including the title character in the 2005 version of King Kong (in which he also played the ship's cook in live-action) and as Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). He also worked with game developers Ninja Theory on the 2007 release Heavenly Sword, providing the motion capture and voice for King Bohan (the game's main villain).
In 2006, Serkis starred as serial killer Ian Brady in the BAFTA-nominated Longford, co-starring Samantha Morton as Myra Hindley and Jim Broadbent as Lord Longford. That same year, Serkis appeared in the role of Mr. Grin in Stormbreaker, the film rendition of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider novel. He also acted in the film The Prestige as Mr. Alley (assistant to Nikola Tesla), as the voice of one of the henchrats in the Aardman Animations film Flushed Away named Spike, and appeared in Jim Threapleton's improvised feature film Extraordinary Rendition, which premiered in 2007. In 2007, he appeared in Sugarhouse, a low-budget independently made film, playing local crime lord Hoodwink, who terrorises an east London housing estate. For the role, Serkis shaved his head and had sessions lasting 20 hours each to have temporary tattoos stencilled onto his body. The film premiered at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival and released in the UK on 24 August. Also that year, Serkis provided the voiceover for Monkey Life, on Five broadcast for three weeks from 13 to 31 August 2007. This series was about Monkey World, the popular ape and monkey sanctuary and zoo near Wool, Dorset. In the joint BBC/HBO production Einstein and Eddington, (2008) Serkis played Albert Einstein, following the development of his theory of relativity, while David Tennant played scientist Sir Arthur Eddington. In 2008, Serkis appeared as Rigaud in the BBC Television adaptation of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit and as Capricorn in Inkheart, the film adaptation of Cornelia Funke's novel. In 2010, Serkis played 1970s new wave…