Quotes from Andy Serkis

I don't see a difference between playing a performance capture role and a live action role, they're just characters to me at the end of the day and I'm an actor who wants to explore those characters in fantastically written scripts. The only caveat is a good story is a good character.

People used to say, 'Andy Serkis lent his movements to Gollum,' and now they say, 'Andy Serkis played Caesar.' That's a significant leap.

I had to relearn how to ride a horse like an ape. I had to change how I jumped off and how I gripped them with my thighs and distribute my weight differently.

Performance capture is a technology, not a genre; it's just another way of recording an actor's performance.

You'll very rarely find that you can enhance a performance to give it a real emotional centre and truth... after the fact.

I'm quite contrary. If people agree on something, I tend to gravitate the other way by my nature. I don't like to be told what to do. I think it goes back to school. I like to do things I want to do and I really don't like doing what I don't want to do.

Gollum is my picture of Dorian Gray. He will be with me for the rest of life, and I will grow to look more like him as I get older.

The great thing about performance capture is you can go off, and then, without changing costume, you can become another character.

There's a huge gulf between people who can afford to go to drama school and those who can't.

The wonderful thing about 48 fps is the integration of live action and CG elements; that is something I learned from 'The Hobbit.' We are so used to 24 fps and the romance of celluloid... but at 48 fps, you cannot deny the existence of these CG creations in the same time frame and space and environment as the live action.

Looking back, when I was Gollum, I suppose I did break the mold to a certain extent. I'm proud, and very thrilled, to be a part of that.

You can't just come up with an idea for a game and stick the drama on top. It all has to be one driving thrust.

I've been writing and wanting to direct for a long time.

Over the years, people have asked me, 'Do you think there should be a separate category for acting in the digital realm? Or hybrid sort of awards for digital characters?' and so on. And I've always really maintained that I don't believe so.

Recently I read that half the world or more has read 'The Lord of The Rings,' but then I found out that something like 75 per cent of the world knows the 'Tintin' books.

People find it hard to get their heads around nominating a computer-generated character, but every time you see Gollum on the screen, that's me who is acting up there - even if it is behind a mass of pixels - and it's my voice you hear.

I enjoy high-speed about-turns in thought.

It was a fairly happy childhood. My father was working away, and my mum brought up five kids all on her own.

Just being an ape is a workout.

But that's not what an actor does. An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.

If you're in a motion-capture studio, you have spherical, reflective markers, which are picked up by cameras that emit infrared - it reflects it, and then the cameras pick up the data.

Gollum is Gollum - though in 'Lord of the Rings' he's 600 years old and in 'The Hobbit' he's 540, so he looks a little bit more handsome.

The learning curve is 'The Hobbit' is being shot in 3D.

If 'The Hobbit' happens - and there's reason to believe that it will - then I think I'm in with a chance! Gollum is very much part of 'The Hobbit,' after all.