Andy Serkis
Biography
He was born Andy Serkis on April 20, 1964, in Ruislip Manor, West London, England. He has three sisters and a brother. His father, an ethnic Armenian, named Serkissian, was a Medical Doctor working abroad, in Iraq, and the Serkis family spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East. For the first ten years of his life Andy Serkis used to go backwards and forwards between Baghdad and London. His mother was busy working as a special education teacher of handicapped children, so Andy and his four siblings were raised with au pairs in the house. Young Andy Serkis wanted to be an artist; he was fond of painting and drawing, and visualized himself working behind the scenes in productions. He attended St. Benedict's School, a Roman Catholic School for boys at the Benedictine Abbey in London. Serkis studied visual arts at Lancaster University in the north-west of England. There he became involved in mechanical aspects of the theatre and did stage design and set building for theatrical productions. Then Serkis was asked to play a role in a student production, and made his stage debut in Barrie Keefe's play 'Gotcha'; thereafter he switched from stage design to acting, which was a real calling that transformed his life.Instead of going to an acting college, in 1985 Serkis began his professional acting career at the Duke's Playhouse in Lancaster, where he was given an Equity card and performed in fourteen plays one after another, as an apprentice of Jonathan Petherbridge. After that he worked in touring theatre companies, doing it for no money, fueled by a sense of enthusiasm, moving to a new town every week. He has thus appeared in a host of popular plays and on almost every renowned British stage. In 1989 he appeared in a stage production of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth', so beginning his long association with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, where he would return many times to appear in 'She Stoops to Conquer', 'Your Home in the West' and the 'True Nature of Love' among other plays. In the 1990s Serkis began to make his mark on the London stage, appearing at the Royal Court Theatre as the Fool in 'King Lear', making his interpretation of the Fool as the woman that Lear, a widower, could relate to - a man, in drag, as a Victorian musician. He also appeared as Potts in the hit play 'Mojo', playing in front of full houses and earning huge critical success. In 1987, Serkis made his debut on television, and he acted in several major British TV miniseries throughout the 1990s.In 1999, Andy Serkis landed the prize role of Gollum in Peter Jackson's epic film trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's saga 'The Lord of the Rings'. He spent four years on the part and received awards and nominations for his performance as Gollum, a computer generated character in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) which won 11 Oscars. Gollum was the collaborative team's effort around Serkis's work in performance capture - an art form based on CGI-assisted acting. Serkis's work was an interactive performance in a skin-tight CGI suit with markers allowing cameras to track and register 3D position for each marker. Serkis' every nuance was picked up by several cameras positioned at precisely calculated angles to allow for the software to see enough information to process the image. The images of Serkis' performances were translated into the digital format by animators at Weta Digital studio in New Zealand. There his image was key-frame animated and then edited into the movie, Serkis did have one scene in the Return of the King showing how he originally had the ring, killing another hobbit to posses it after they found it during a fishing trip. He drew from his three cats clearing fur balls out of their throats to develop the constricted voice he produced for Gollum and Smeagol, and it was also enhanced by sound editing in post-production.Serkis spent almost two years in New Zealand and away from his family, and much of 2002 and 2003 in post-production studios for large periods of time, due to complexity of the creative process of bringing the character of Gollum to the screen. Serkis had to shoot two versions for every scene; one version was with him on camera, acting with (chiefly) Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, which served both to show Wood and Astin the moves so that they could precisely interact with the movements of Gollum, and to provide the CGI artists the subtleties of Gollum's physical movements and facial expressions for their manual finishing of the animated images. In the other version, he'd do the voice off-camera, as Wood and Astin repeated their movements as though Gollum were there with them; that take would be the basis for inserting the CGI Gollum used in the released movie. In post-production, Serkis was doing motion-capture wearing a skintight motion capture suit with CGI gear while acting as a virtual puppeteer redoing every single scene in the studio. Additional CGI rotomation was done by animators using the human eye instead of the computer to capture the subtleties of Serkis' performance. Serkis also used this art form in his performance as Kong in King Kong (2005), which won him a Toronto Film Critics Association Award (2005) for his unprecedented work helping to realize the main character in King Kong, and a Visual Effects Society Award (2006) for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Motion Picture.Apart from his line of CGI-driven characters, Serkis continued with traditional acting in several leading and supporting roles, such as his appearances as Richard Kneeland opposite Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 (2004), and Alley opposite David Bowie in The Prestige (2006), among other film performances. On television he starred as Vincent Van Gogh in the sixth episode of _Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006)_, the BBC2 series about artists. Serkis is billed as Capricorn in the upcoming adventure film Inkheart (2008). At the same time, he continued the development of performance capture while expanding his career into computer games. He starred as King Bothan in martial arts drama Heavenly Sword (2007) (VG), a Playstation 3 title, for which he provided a basis for his in-game face and also acts as a dramatic director on the project.Andy Serkis married actress and singer Lorraine Ashbourne, and the couple have three children: daughter Ruby, and two sons Sonny (b. 2000) and Louis George (born 19 June 2004). Away from acting, Andy Serkis is an accomplished amateur painter. Since his school years at Lancaster, being so close to the Lake District, Serkis developed his other passion in life: mountaineering. He is pescetarian. Serkis has been active in charitable causes, such as The Hope Foundation which provides essential life-saving medical aid for children suffering from Leukaemia and children from countries devastated by war. In October 2006 he was a presenter at the first annual British Academy Video Games Awards at the Roundhouse, London. Andy Serkis lives with his family in North London, England.
Filmography
The Hobbit: Part 2 (2013)
The Hobbit: Part 1 (2012)
Freezing Time (2011)
Down and Dirty Pictures (2011)
The Spider (2011)
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011)
Rise of the Apes (2011)
Death of a Superhero (2010)
Burke and Hare (2010)
A black comedy about two 19th century grave robbers who find a lucrative business providing cadavers for an Edinburgh medical school.
Brighton Rock (2010)
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010)
Risen (2009)
Suicide Man (2009)
Little Dorrit(2008)
Inkheart (2008)
Based on the book by Cornelia Funke, \\\"Inkheart\\\" is a timeless adventure tale of imagination that centers on Meggie, a young girl whose father has a secret ability to bring characters from books to life when he reads them aloud. But when a power-hungry villain from a rare children\\\'s fable kidnaps Meggie\\\'s father to bring others out of the boundaries of fiction, she and a disparate group of friends
Einstein and Eddington (2008)
The Cottage (2008)
Heavenly Sword (2007)
Sugarhouse (2007)
Extraordinary Rendition (2007)
Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II - Rise of the Witch King (2006)
Simon Schama's Power of Art(2006)
Longford (2006)
Flushed Away (2006)
The story of an uptown rat that gets flushed down the toilet from his penthouse apartment, ending in the sewers of London, where he has to learn a whole new and different way of life.
The Prestige (2006)
Based on Christopher Priest\'s 1996 novel, Bale and Jackman play rival magicians in turn-of-the-century London who battle each other for trade secrets. The rivalry is so intense that it turns them into murderers.
Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (2006)
Based on the first of the best-selling series of Alex Rider novels by Anthony Horowitz, STORMBREAKER introduces the reluctant teenage super-spy to cinema audiences. After the death of his uncle, the 14-year-old hero is forced by the Special OperationsDivision of Britain's secret intelligence service, MI6, for a mission which will save millions of lives.
Stingray (2006)
King Kong (2005)
Set in the 1930s, this is the story of a group of explorers and documentary filmmakers (led by Black) who travel to the mysterious Skull Island (near Sumatra) to investigate legends of a giant gorilla named Kong. Once there, they discover that King Kong is a real creature, living in a massive jungle where creatures from prehistoric times have been protected and hidden for millions of years. As the explorers search for the great ape, their quest puts them up against both Kong and his dinosaur enemies. Ultimately, it is the attention of a beautiful human woman (Watts) that soothes Kong long enough for him to be subdued by the explorers and shipped back to New York, where his bleak future involves being put on display in front of humans... but how long can even the mightiest shackles of man hold back an ape 25 feet tall?
Kong: The 8th Wonder of the World (2005)
Stories of Lost Souls (2005)
MI-5(2004)
Blessed (2004)
13 Going on 30 (2004)
Standing Room Only (2004)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
The Simpsons(2003)
The Simpsons is an animated sitcom about the antics of a dysfunctional family called the Simpsons (surprise surprise). Homer is the oafish unhealthy beer loving father, Marge is the hardworking homemaker wife, Bart is the ten year old underachiever (and proud of it), Lisa is the unappreciated eight year old genius, and Maggie is the cute, pacifier loving silent infant. Written by Sam Kelly The Simpsons are a very politically incorrect family. Homer works with pride in a nuclear power plant run with more regard for profit that safety. His wife is Marge, a kind of supermom. They have three kids: Bart, an underachiever ("and proud of it"), Lisa (who is as serious and responsible as Bart isn't), and Maggie. Written by Murray Chapman {muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au} The Simpsons is the ultimate (if very unorthodox) nuclear family. Homer, the lovable dufus father, stumbles apathetic ally through his family life and work at the local nuclear power plant. Marge, the overbearing but responsible mother, Bart, the 4th grade underachiever and nemesis to Springfield elementary's principal, Lisa, the brainy and responsible 8 year old, and Maggie, the oft-forgotten baby, round out the family. Based on a series of small cartoon sketches from the Tracy Ullman show, the Simpsons enjoy many wacky exploits in their hometown and beyond. Other characters include an incompetent lawyer, the tyrranical nuclear power plant owner, the too-perfect neighbors (the Flanders) of the Simpsons, and the less than perfect "Klown", Krusty. Colorful characters and situations abound. Written by Sam Hayes {gshayes@mail.gwi.net} Animated primetime series that follows the exploits of a hapless and semi-dysfunctional nuclear family named the Simpsons, who live in the fictional town of Springfield, whose various inhabitants add to the comedy, angst, satire and parody of this series. Written by Ondre Lombard {olombard@lombard.dialup.cyberverse.com} The Simpsons are a dysfunctional family living in Springfield. Homer, the man of the house, is a safety inspector at the Nuclear Power Plant. Homer constantly spends most of his time at Moe's Tavern getting drunk. Marge is a hard-working housewife of three children. Bart is a clever 10 year old who loves pranking others. Lisa is the genius of the Simpson family. She receives very excellent grades in school. She is the most trusted person in school and a "principal's pet". Maggie is the youngest. Maggie has not spoken yet. The Simpsons get themselves in some crazy adventures. Written by Seth Weinstein (problemchild4@hotmail.com)
