Has performance capture affected your physical condition? ajyates33
It’s kept me fit, especially the more physical roles like Caesar [in the Planet of the Apes films], who goes from an infant chimpanzee right through into adulthood. I’ve always been quite a physical person and enjoy mountaineering, climbing and cycling. But those roles take it out of you, for sure.
How did your fellow actors react the first time you went “full Gollum”? chriskilby
Gollum drives so many of the scenes. Peter Jackson was like: “How can we get an actor on set to give all that dramatic interaction?” It was a very different process to Elijah Wood and Sean Astin acting against a tennis ball on a stick. Now, performance capture has evolved into an industry standard. Actors who didn’t understand are getting excited about being able to transform into pretty much anything. Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle [2018, directed by Serkis] was a prime example of when the actors thought: I can really use my acting chops. It was great watching Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale and Naomie Harris capturing their movements and facial expressions on set to really make the animals come alive.
Do you keep your spotty wetsuit on under your clothes at all times, just in case? Alex42
One of the great moments of wearing the magic suit is looking into the screen and seeing the avatar character move in real time. Wearing something you can move around in so easily is very liberating. It is a bit of a pain to get in and out of, but of course I take it off to wash it, otherwise it would be very smelly.
If you had to live the rest your life with one of your performance-captured characters, who would make the best housemate? reddonkeyham
Captain Haddock [from 2011’s The Adventures of Tintin] would be pretty hard to live with. Caesar would be more interesting to hang around. He’s constantly evolving to become more honourable and humanlike, but keeping his ape intelligence to try to make the world a better place. Living with Gollum would be a nightmare. You’d never be able to leave anything around because he’d steal it, he’d leave a mess everywhere and there would be lots of arguments. Plus, Gollum lives in a cave.
You’ve got my vote in the next general election. Who’d do the best job in a post-Boris No 10 – Gollum, Caesar or Ian Dury? GuyEdweezil
Any of them would do a better job!
You were fantastic in 2002’s 24 Hour Party People. How does working with someone like Michael Winterbottom compare with big-budget Hollywood performance capture ape/wizard things? dylan37
Oh man, it was fantastically chaotic and messy, reliving the Haçienda days. Michael Winterbottom brought together this extraordinary cast and everybody really went for it: Sean Harris as Ian Curtis, John Simm as Bernard Sumner and Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson was an absolute triumph. Martin Hannett, who produced Joy Division and Happy Mondays, was the most brilliantly inspirational out-there character to play.
Your portrayal of Ian Brady in 2006’s Longford was chilling and powerful. How do you prepare for such a challenging role? Jalmaak
That was one of my most difficult roles. You have to find whatever shred of humanity you can, rather than just presenting them as an all-round awful human being. I read The Gates of Janus, the book Brady wrote in prison; his treatise on moral relativism. Psychopaths find ways of justifying their existence because they lack empathy, so they create their own moral reality. Brady said that one of the most beautiful things in his life was standing on the moors with Myra Hindley after committing those murders. The sense of being together made him feel truly validated and alive. So I had to think: what in my life has made me feel the most validated and alive? And that was witnessing my birth of my children. So you find ways of transcribing and translating your own emotional experiences to make these sorts of unpleasant characters real.
You played opposite David Bowie in 2006’s The Prestige. Can you share any stories of the great man? questionforthekeeper
He was one of the funniest human beings I’ve ever met. Plus he was a terrible corpser, so we spent a lot of time trying not to laugh. His portrayal of [inventor] Nikola Tesla was a joy to behold. He said: “My God, my Serbian accent sounds like I’m in ’Allo ’Allo!” He was very self-deprecating, but he was such an awesome human being, a wonderful artist and very inspirational.
Have you done a sneaky Hitchcock-style, uncredited cameo in any of the films you’ve directed? HeseltinesEyebrows
There’s a scene in 2021’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage where Woody Harrelson’s character steals a red Mustang in San Francisco that I decided would be my Hitchcockian moment. I was on crutches after breaking my hip skiing and I thought: “I could play a man on crutches crossing a road as a Mustang speeds towards him.” But because I was directing, I also had the luxury of looking at it afterwards and thinking: “That wasn’t a very good performance.” So I cut myself out of my own cameo.
Given that your parental background is Iraqi and of Armenian descent, do you foresee a role that could bring your mixed culture to the fore? Alexxe
Absolutely. One of my great ambitions is to create an autobiographical exploration of my father. He was from Iraq and, around about the time I was born in the mid-60s, helped build the Ibn Sina hospital in Baghdad with three other people. My mother brought my three older sisters – who’d all grown up in Baghdad – and me to live in England, but we would go back to Baghdad every year. During the Gulf war, there was a big diaspora of Iraqi people who escaped, so I have a lot of relatives and cousins who ended up in New Zealand, Canada, Los Angeles and Europe. I’m very much searching to tell a story about the existence of the Ibn Sina hospital. It was taken over by the Ba’ath party under Saddam Hussein’s regime and ended up being in the Green Zone used by the American military.
I first saw you in the amazing 1999 BBC series Shooting the Past. Who would you be most star-struck by and why? allworthy
My heroes are jazz musicians. The late-50s jazz, bebop, modal-jazz era is really magical for me. If I’d got to meet Miles Davis or John Coltrane it would have blown my mind. Plus, I think Anthony Hopkins is the most incredible actor, so I would love to meet and work with him.
I really enjoyed your full read-through of The Hobbit during lockdown. What was it like to sit there for all those hours, reading for an audience you couldn’t see, at such a bleak time? JallenDM
I did a Hobbitathon – a complete reading of The Hobbit in one sitting – to raise money for the NHS and another charity, Best Beginnings, who I am ambassador for. I wanted to tell a story that would take people on a great adventure, to keep their heads, minds and souls together. I thought it would be amazing for parents to sit their kids down, have some of peace of mind and let someone do a bit of Jackanory storytelling – for 11 hours.
I had four two-minute breaks. I went through moments of hallucinations … there are whole passages that I don’t even remember reading because you just get into the zone. I’d get to the end of a paragraph and realise that it had been Gandalf speaking and I’d been reading it as Bilbo. But for people who were trapped indoors, Tolkien had written this incredible journey, so I wanted to take people along.
My dad was wondering if you still play the saxophone? He played double bass with you on a Channel 4 programme, and also at one of your parties in Shoreditch back in the day when you were at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith. gemmcross
My wife, Lorraine, and I lived in Shoreditch around the late 80s, when I was doing a CITV series called Streetwise about cycle dispatch couriers. We ended up living in – and having a number of parties at – one of the locations from the shoot; this great Victorian warehouse, in pre-hipster Shoreditch, when there was one sandwich shop and nothing else.
Going back to my jazz fascination, I do love playing both tenor and alto sax. It’s a great way to escape. My children have started learning piano, so it’s nice to jam with them. In the first film that I directed, 2017’s Breathe, I actually played on the soundtrack, composed by Nitin Sawhney. Nitin and I are still great friends and jam together. After 2010’s Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, I became very good friends with Chaz Jankel, the piano player from the Blockheads, and did a few gigs with him. So I’m always looking for an excuse to play.
I take you for a beer drinker. Which is your favourite and do prefer dark or light? Mr_Righteous
I’m a more of a lager person. If I’m walking in the Chiltern hills on a Sunday, I may stop in at the pub for a local ale. But, on the whole, I’m mostly a wine drinker.
Has anyone asked you for Michael Sheen’s autograph? TeeDubyaBee
Ha! No. But a funny thing did once happen … I got off a plane coming back from LA and the child of Kate Beckinsale [who was once married to Sheen] ran up to me, thinking I was her dad. I’d love to do something with Michael. There’s a Man United manager too – Ole Gunnar Solskjær – who people have said I look like.
What’s your favourite sandwich? reddonkeyham
I’m very happy with a smoked salmon and cream cheese panini.
Where do you keep the Bafta you won for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in 2020? What advice can you give aspiring young actors? TurangaLeela2
I’ve got it in the basement where I sit and work.
My three children are at the beginning of their acting careers. I say to them: know why you act. What do you want to bring to the world with your craft? Have a direction and a mission. Make it not about fame and celebrity. Be in a position where you can create your own stories. You can make movies on your iPhone to get your story out there, so see yourself as a storyteller. Don’t just wait for the phone to ring and be cast in someone else’s work.
Is all the world a Serkis? GuardIAm
I feel very lucky to have worked with Peter Jackson, because he opened up a whole new arena with the technology of performance capture. It’s 20 years since we did The Lord of the Rings. Performance capture is one of the most exciting tools for an actor. It means that you can become anything regardless of your physicality, shape, size, skin colour, sex … Anyone can become anything. So, yes, in that respect, all the world is a Serkis!
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