He proved motion capture is acting and spent two decades waiting for the Academy to agree. They probably never will.
At a glance
- Known for
- Gollum in *The Lord of the Rings*, Caesar in *Planet of the Apes*, pioneer of performance capture
- Before fame
- Studied visual arts at Lancaster University, wanted to be a painter
- Off-screen
- Father was an Iraqi-Armenian gynecologist; family name was originally Serkisian
Part of The Lord of the Rings featuring Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, and Cate Blanchett.
Rise to Fame
The casting call was just for a voice. Peter Jackson needed someone to record Gollum's dialogue for The Lord of the Rings, and Serkis got the job. He showed up on set in New Zealand, performing the character physically for the other actors and crawling around on all fours between takes. The plan changed. Weta Digital redesigned Gollum's face to resemble his.
Producer Barrie Osborne campaigned for a Best Supporting Actor nomination. The Academy wasn't interested. That snub became the opening argument in a fight about whether motion capture counts as acting, one he's been winning everywhere except at the podium for over twenty years.
In the Spotlight
Three franchise mo-cap campaigns, zero Oscar nominations. Caesar in the Planet of the Apes trilogy got a full studio push from 2011 to 2017. Still nothing. BAFTA gave him Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in 2020, with Ian McKellen presenting.
Warner Bros. handed him The Hunt for Gollum to direct and star in. His Animal Farm, fifteen years in the making, opened to $3.3 million and a Rotten Tomatoes score around 25%. Peter Jackson has said the AI debate may have permanently shut the door on Oscar recognition for mo-cap. The man who proved digital performance is human art might lose his shot because the industry can't tell the difference anymore.
Side Notes
Before the tracking suit, there was a theatre design degree. He studied visual arts at Lancaster and only switched to acting after being roped into a student production of Gotcha. His father, an Iraqi-Armenian gynecologist named Clement Serkis (the family's original surname was Serkisian), worked across the Middle East.
In 2014, he called animators' contributions to motion capture "digital makeup," arguing they were painting over his performance. VFX artists were furious. He co-founded The Imaginarium Studios in 2011 to push performance capture as a production method. Someone who trained to make art with his hands spent his career insisting the body inside the suit is the canvas, not the paint.