Andy Serkis facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Andy Serkis
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Serkis at MegaCon Orlando in 2025
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| Born |
Andrew Clement Serkis
20 April 1964 Ruislip Manor, Middlesex, England
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| Education | Lancaster University |
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| Years active | 1985–present |
| Spouse(s) |
Lorraine Ashbourne
(m. 2002) |
| Children | 3, including Ruby and Louis |
| Awards | Full list |
Andy Serkis (born Andrew Clement Serkis on April 20, 1964) is a talented English actor and filmmaker. He is famous for his amazing work with motion capture. This special technique allows him to act out characters that are then turned into computer-generated figures on screen.
Some of his most well-known motion capture roles include:
- Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies (2001–2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012).
- King Kong in the 2005 movie King Kong.
- Caesar in the Planet of the Apes movies (2011–2017).
- Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin (2011).
- Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars movies The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017).
Serkis has won several awards for his motion capture acting, including an Empire Award and two Saturn Awards. He also received nominations for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe for his role in the TV film Longford (2006). In 2020, he received a special BAFTA Award for his amazing contribution to British cinema.
Besides his motion capture work, Serkis has also played live-action roles. He was Ulysses Klaue in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Black Panther (2018). He also played Alfred Pennyworth in The Batman (2022) and Kino Loy in the Star Wars Disney+ series Andor (2022).
Andy Serkis also directs films. He made his directing debut with Breathe (2017) and also directed Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021). He has his own company, The Imaginarium, which focuses on motion capture technology.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Andy Serkis was born on April 20, 1964, in Ruislip Manor, England. He spent parts of his childhood in both England and Baghdad, Iraq. His mother was half Iraqi and half English, and his father was an Iraqi-Armenian doctor. His family often traveled to cities in the Middle East during holidays.
Serkis went to Lancaster University where he studied visual arts and theatre. He was very involved in student plays, helping with design and acting. He even played the main role in a play called Gotcha during his first year. This experience made him decide to focus on acting. He studied famous acting methods and even created his own one-man show based on a graphic novel.
Career Highlights
After university, Serkis joined a local theatre company called the Duke's Playhouse. He spent 18 months acting in many different plays, from classic Shakespeare to modern works. He then joined touring theatre groups and eventually settled in London, where he continued to act in plays and began working in television.
Becoming Gollum and Motion Capture
Andy Serkis became widely known for his role as Sméagol / Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies (2001–2003). He provided both the voice and the movements for the computer-generated character using motion capture. This was a big deal because it started a discussion about whether actors who perform motion capture should be nominated for awards, just like actors in live-action roles. Many people felt Serkis deserved recognition because his performance was so important to the character.
Serkis continued to be a master of motion capture in many other films:
- He played the giant ape King Kong in the 2005 film. He also had a small live-action role in that movie as the ship's cook.
- He brought the intelligent ape leader Caesar to life in the 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) movies. His co-star, James Franco, even campaigned for Serkis to get an Oscar nomination for his work as Caesar.
- He played Captain Haddock in The Adventures of Tintin (2011), which was directed by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.
- He was also the voice and motion capture for Baloo in his own directed film Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018).
Other Notable Roles
Beyond motion capture, Serkis has taken on many different live-action roles. In 2006, he played the real-life criminal Ian Brady in the film Longford, which earned him award nominations. He also appeared in The Prestige as Mr. Alley and voiced a character in the animated film Flushed Away.
In 2008, Serkis played the famous scientist Albert Einstein in the TV production Einstein and Eddington. He also played the 1970s musician Ian Dury in the film ... & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010).
More recently, Serkis joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ulysses Klaue in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and Black Panther (2018). He also played the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. In 2022, he took on the role of Alfred Pennyworth, Batman's loyal butler, in The Batman. He also returned to the Star Wars universe in a live-action role as Kino Loy in the Disney+ series Andor.
Directing Films
Andy Serkis has also stepped behind the camera as a director. He was the second unit director for The Hobbit movies, meaning he directed specific scenes like aerial shots and battle sequences.
His first feature film as a director was Breathe (2017), a true story about a man who becomes paralyzed. He also directed and starred in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018), a darker take on The Jungle Book. In 2021, he directed the superhero sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage. As of 2025, he is set to direct an animated version of George Orwell's Animal Farm and a new Lord of the Rings film called The Hunt for Gollum, which is expected in 2026.
The Imaginarium Studios
In 2011, Andy Serkis co-founded The Imaginarium Studios in London with film producer Jonathan Cavendish. This company is a special studio that focuses on creating digital characters using performance capture technology. It's where Serkis and his team invent and bring to life many of the amazing computer-generated characters you see in movies today. The studio is also working on a new motion capture adaptation of Animal Farm.
Other Activities
Serkis has also been involved in other interesting projects. He wrote a memoir about his experiences playing Gollum called Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic. In 2015, he helped the band Coldplay with their music video for "Adventure of a Lifetime", where the band members performed as chimpanzees using motion capture.
During the COVID-19 lockdown, Serkis read the entire book of The Hobbit online to raise money for charities. More than 650,000 people watched, and he raised a lot of money! He later recorded professional audiobooks for The Hobbit and all three The Lord of the Rings novels.
He is also creating a comic book series called Eternus, which is about Heracles, the son of Zeus.
Personal Life
Andy Serkis married actress Lorraine Ashbourne in July 2002. They live in North London and have three children: Ruby (born 1998), Sonny (born 2000), and Louis (born 2004). All three of his children are also actors! Ruby and Louis appeared in the 2019 film The Kid Who Would Be King. Ruby also starred in the 2020 Netflix series The Letter for the King, where she played a character whose father was played by Andy Serkis himself. Louis voiced a character in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, which his father directed and also starred in.
See also
In Spanish: Andy Serkis para niños
- Motion-capture acting
