Conversations with Andy Serkis (2014)

Career Q&A with Andy Serkis on November 7, 2014.  Moderated by Scott Mantz, Access Hollywood.

Andy Serkis is known to millions of fans for his portrayal of the depraved creature Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, as the giant ape Kong in Jackson's King Kong and as Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. For his portrayal of the revolutionary chimpanzee Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Andy received a Virtuoso Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, and was nominated as Best Supporting Actor by the film critics associations of Houston, San Diego and the Washington Area as well as the 2011 Satellite Awards and the BFCA Critics' Choice Movie Awards. He reprised his role as Caesar in 2014's Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Andy earned the Evening Standard Film Award for Best Actor for his tour-de-force portrayal of rocker Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. He scored nominations for the Emmy and the Golden Globe for playing murderer Ian Brady in Longford and earned the Empire Award for Best British Actor for The Return of the King. Along the way he's portrayed Albert Einstein, Vincent van Gogh and, in Mike Leigh's Topsy Turvy, the madcap choreographer John D'Auban.

In recent years, Andy has branched into other aspects of entertainment. He's directed a short film, Snake and a stage play, The Double Bass. He was Second Unit Director of The Hobbit. He's been active as a writer, director and performer in some of the most successful video games.

Andy formed Caveman Films to produce independent films in UK, and The Imaginarium Studios in London to bring performance capture and other technology to bear on the performing arts.