Andy Serkis gives digital characters the physical unease and emotional weight that their appearance cannot supply alone. His Gollum remains our clearest reason to value him: restless, divided and hard to stop watching.
Fi1m perspective
Gollum never seems able to settle. In Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Andy Serkis makes that restlessness troubling without needing the character’s appearance to do all the work. We felt uneasy watching him because his persistent agitation prevented us from treating Gollum as merely an ingenious effect. That unease is useful in a fantasy film with so much else competing for attention. Serkis keeps us watching one creature while Jackson has battles to organise.
The method has a usefully undignified starting point: Serkis drew on a cat coughing up a furball for Gollum’s voice and spasms. The discomfort is audible, which matters for a character so divided against himself. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) established the performance; in The Return of the King, Ian McKellen’s steady Gandalf and Viggo Mortensen’s reserved Aragorn give it useful company. Those differences help Jackson keep the solemnity bearable.
King Kong (2005), again with Jackson, made performance capture the basis of another leading role. Caesar then gave Serkis a character to sustain through 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). The important development was consistency: his performance had to carry emotional weight across three films, and he maintained it. His live-action work also includes Alley in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006), though Gollum and Caesar make the clearer case for his particular skills.
For all Serkis contributes, The Return of the King has stretches that could be shorter. His move into directing, with Breathe (2017) and Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018), has brought mixed responses, including criticism of Mowgli’s execution. We would be cautious about treating his skill as a performer as a guarantee behind the camera. Start with Gollum, and leave Jackson enough time to finish.
Biography
Andy Serkis is an English actor and director. He is known for his motion-capture performances as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot series (2011–2017), and Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017). He played Alley in The Prestige (2006).
Serkis has received two Empire Awards and two Saturn Awards for his motion-capture work. He was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for portraying Ian Brady in Longford (2006), and received a further BAFTA nomination for his role as Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010). In 2020 he was awarded the BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema.
