Andy Serkis

I was thinking about that. I was thinking, this is like our Boyhood; this is like our getting together over 12 years to make - this our Apehood! I mean, this is it! For me, the relationships, all of those things, over such a long period of time now with actors, but also seeing the characters grow, develop, and change, and go through different situations.

My belief about performance capture is that it\'s a technology which allows actors to play extraordinary characters. But from an acting perspective, I\'ve never drawn a distinction between playing a conventional, live action character and playing a role in a performance capture suit. And from a purely acting point-of-view, I don\'t believe there should be a special Oscar category because I think it sort of muddies the waters in a way.

Rather than something like King Kong where I really went after studying gorillas in the wild and captivity. I based Caesar [ from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes] on a real chimpanzee and I worked with Terry [Notary] on a lot of chimpanzee movement.

But the first time I had to stand up and sing with them was when we did the pre-record for the movie and it was that moment where I sort of said to myself: \"S**t, now I actually have to do this and I have to stand up and do my stars in your eyes moment!\" Wake Up and Make Love With Me was the first song and I thought: \"Here we are with Chaz and all the boys...\"

You don\'t go - oh this is a motion capture role, I\'m going to employ this method of acting. We don\'t have anything to hide behind when we\'re doing this.

There\'s this whole grey area seemingly every time it\'s talked about animators and who takes ultimate responsibility for the characters [of the Planet of the apes] but without question and I\'ll go down saying this year after year, these characters are authored by what we do on set. They are not authored by animators.

I love, first of all, reading and discovering what the common perception is and then trying to figure out... well, how does your life cross over into that character, or what\'s an angle on this that might challenge the status quo? It\'s just a great journey as well as an education. You\'re constantly being educated - it\'s like I\'m back at school and making up for lost time.

Caesar [from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes] was brought up with human beings and because of the drug he had pretty much grown up with his whole life, he felt like an outsider, he felt trapped in an ape\'s body but he didn\'t really feel like an ape and that was my way into the character. So he\'s always had this duality playing him from an infant all the way to now as a fifty-five year old ape.

I mean, in many ways, you know, I felt very connected to Ian (Dury) on, on a lot of levels. I mean, politically, & sort of, socially, our, kind of, social backgrounds are quite similar in many ways, as well as our kind of artistic endeavors. So there were many, many things that sort of chimed in for me, and kind of made me feel very instinctive about playing him, and, and although, there was sort of a certain amount of impression involved, actually, there\'s a lot of myself in the role.

Working with people you adore and love. There\'s just a sense, all the way through all of the movies [Planet of Apes], that you\'re very rarely in a position where you have great material that you\'re passionate about and a big audience who love it, and the detail and nuance, and the exquisiteness of the fantastic actors and director with great writing.

At the moment, my trajectory isn\'t to think about acting. I\'m absolutely devoted to The Imaginarium, our projects and directing. And watching and enabling other actors do their thing in our studio is hugely rewarding. I expect at some point I\'ll probably want to go back on stage and do some theater, because I\'ve not done theater in 10 years.

I think what traditional studios probably don\'t understand is that it\'s a genuine advancement in the actor\'s tradition. And you know, the tradition and craft of acting. And it\'s the latest step. You know, we, we tend to find forms of delivering stories that fit our times.

Where as you go into playing something like Ulysses [on Black Panther], you go - I\'m going to have this haircut and this cloth, you draw from different stimulus.

In a personal way, to do with family and the father-son relationship, in a kind of artistic way with regard to him being an art student. I also studied the visual arts at Lancaster University. I then decided to become an actor as he was becoming a musician. And then as an actor/performer, we have similar sort of interests - music hall and that whole world. So, there\'s a lot that I felt connected with.

There are no rhymes or reason, actually. Having said that, you know, cause there are people who are absolutely single-minded about their process and they can still come up with great work. But (what) I enjoy and it\'s the same, I suppose, as I became more of a family man, I enjoy, I enjoy an atmosphere where it, you know, doesn\'t have to be about conflict to get good results.

I have a great interest in Victorian musical & cabaret performances and Weimar artists so the references are there, to Cabaret and also All That Jazz and other films where, where there\'s a kind of (influential German playwright Bertolt) Brecht-ian approach, almost to the character standing outside of himself or, in this case, he\'s \"self-séance-ing.\"

The difference between the big budget films I\'ve done is the length of time. But in terms of the day-to-day, you\'re still going on to set, you\'re getting into character, and you\'re going and doing your job, so there\'s absolutely no difference. It\'s just the structure around it and the length of time. But in terms of budget and money, it doesn\'t really manifest itself.

I just directed The Jungle Book with Cate Blanchet and Christian Bale.

Animators do amazing working translating and interpolating the characters [in the Planet of the apes], the facial performances. What we\'re creating on set - if you don\'t get it on the day, in the moment, on set, in front of the camera, with the director and the actors. The emotional content of the scene and the acting choices.

When I first was offered the role on Rise [of the Planet of the Apes], I always played Caesar as a human being within ape skin.

It\'s a really unique situation where you just - you make independent films or you make big blockbuster movies, but it\'s very rare when all of those ingredients come together, and you can really tell a story that you care about with a character you absolutely love with the people you love making movies with.

The matter is - we are actors playing roles [in Planet Apes] and they happen to be in this instance apes but there\'s no difference. In the scenes that we\'re playing, if we were to block out the scenes as actors in costumes, it would be no different.

There is always that potential in the same way - Roddy McDowall ended up playing Cornelius to Caesar [in the Planet of the Apes]. Two different characters. That\'s the joy of the craft. Bring it on I say.

It\'s a different rhythm than most movies. For a lot of the actors, you\'re 12,000 miles away from home. It becomes a way of life - getting up at five in the morning, shooting every day, day in day out, for 270 days. The new cast playing the dwarves were carrying incredibly heavy weights in their suits, they sat through hours of make-up every day. So it\'s quite challenging from a stamina point of view.

Be magnificent. Life's short. Get out there. You can do it. Everyone can do it. Everyone.

The process of acting is no different [playing human or ape]. You\'re embodying the character. You\'re creating the psychology and the physicality. You\'re living the moment.

It\'s really up to the acting community to be willing to be educated about what performance capture is in order to fully appreciate it as acting. It\'s not a type of acting, but rather the use of technology to harness an actor\'s performance and translate it into an ape, another animal, or an avatar of some kind.

When you come out of the other end of a long process, working with a character [you realize] this character has really shaped my ideas.

it\'s a weird thing with acting and it happens to a lot of actors, not just myself - it\'s like you\'re giving off an I really need to be loved today vibe. My worst moment recently is I fell asleep on the tube in London on the Victoria line 8:30 in the morning and I woke up and there were about five people with iPhones taking pictures.

I love the whole kind of notion of transformation for me is (what) excites me about not only acting, but storytelling. I love, I love that notion of a slightly larger-than-life artistic truth, you know, magnifying real emotional truth (or) finding something about human condition (which), you wouldn\'t necessarily think you can learn from characters such as Kong or Gollum, but actually they are, you know, these huge amplifications of a human psyche and I suppose those kind of roles have always attracted me definitely.