If you’re a Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit fan, you’ll know that Andy Serkis is the man behind the amazing performance of Gollum in the series. In a recent interview, Serkis revealed his frustrations at not being recognised as an actor for these portrayals.

He said:

“I am a bit evangelical, I know, but performance-capture is still misunderstood. Ten years down the line, people say, ‘Oh, so you did the voice of Gollum?’ Or people go, ‘You did the movements for Kong?’ It’s frustrating, because I play Gollum and I play Kong. It is acting.”

Serkis was hired by Jackson who decided to use performance capture for the role of Gollum.

“Originally when I went off to work on The Lord of The Rings I got a call from my agent saying that I was just going to do a voice. But I couldn’t really approach it like that. To get Gollum’s voice I had to play the character. I told Peter that was how I’d like to do it and when he was watching me moving around on set he said, ‘Stop everything. We are going to film Andy’s performance and then we are going to experiment with performance-capture’.”

Serkis is currently in theatres in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, playing (you guessed it!) an ape.