Another Serkis freak

Following big roles in films where his mug was never seen – Gollum in Lord of the Ringsand the regal ape in King Kong– Andy Serkis cements his reputation as the master of a new kind of acting as the smart chimp Caesar in the actually-very-good Rise of the Planet of the Apes. He's also played the truly feral Ian Brady. He tells DONALD CLARKEabout acting's dark side

IT'S HARD not to draw inappropriate parallels. So let's do so. The unexpectedly splendid Rise of the Planet of the Apes, prequel to that classic 1968 picture, depicts a city in a state of appalling turmoil.

Oppressed, ignored and abused, the great apes of San Francisco have risen up against their human overlords. The police look on helplessly as the primates run amok through the hilly streets and inflict violent deadlock on the US’s most famous bridge.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and Andy Serkis – who “plays” the chimpanzee instigator – has just travelled from his home in north London to a sedate corner of Mayfair. As we speak, the fires are dying down in Croydon, Lewisham and Hackney. It’s all a little eerie.

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “Oh God. It’s hardly surprising, though. The touchpaper has been lit by some incident and it has led to this manifestation of anger – this feeling of being dropped through the net. There’s been no leadership from the government. And there’s no cause on the streets. It’s just a flailing around of pure anger.”

As I understand it, Serkis used to be a committed activist for the Socialist Workers Party. He must feel the old Marxist energies bubbling up.

“Nothing happens. Even when people are properly galvanised. Even when, as happened with the Gulf War, thousands of people come out and march against war, nothing happens.”

Serkis's scrunched, furrowed face is now well known. But his big breakthrough came in a role where his mug was never seen. Back at the turn of the century, impressed by his flexible, angular timbre, Peter Jackson asked him to voice Gollum, reptilian ring junkie, for his epic Lord of the Ringscycle. The role steadily evolved and – with the help of computer modelling – Serkis went on to provide the creature's every movement.

“Peter really wanted an actor in the role. He didn’t want the actors playing Sam and Frodo to act against a tennis ball on a stick and have to imagine how he would be moving. That was a significant shift from an animated character to a nuanced, three- dimensional character.”

A few years later Serkis repeated the trick as the title character in Jackson's King Kong. Now, playing Caesar, the chimp who, his brain enhanced by an artificially created virus, precipitates the revolution that will eventually lead to the ape-dominated society depicted in Planet of the Apes, he cements his reputation as the master of a new kind of acting. Caesar is a touching creation. It's all computer-generated imagery. But it's also all Serkis.

“Many actors still do not know how it works, but it’s just another way of capturing an actor’s performance. If you are playing an extreme role like Gollum or King Kong, you can play that role without layers of prosthetic make-up. You begin to feel that that sort of make-up is a bit theatrical.”

Serkis, who is now 47 and was raised in and around London, is known for immersing himself in his roles. Before playing Ian Dury, bolshie post-punk singer, in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll, he walked with a cane for weeks. In preparation for King Kong, he spent hours communing with a gorilla in the zoo. He admits there wasn't time to get down with the chimps when preparing for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But he still brought the role home with him.

“Absolutely. When you go into these characters it’s not easy to turn them off,” he muses. “Your body starts to change. This was shot in Vancouver, and there’s a big park in the city. My regime was to run around the park before everyone was up. Then I’d work on getting into character. I’d go back to the hotel as Caesar. You find rituals.”

One suspects Serkis would have had a healthy career even without that odd experience on The Lord of the Rings. An engaging, smart man with a singular approach to performance – always tortured, always slightly sinister – he's the sort of offbeat character actor who stays in work while the pretty lead performers get mercilessly annihilated by age and changing fashions.

Serkis comes from a colourful background. His father, of Armenian descent, was an Iraqi gynaecologist. While mum brought up the family in West Ruislip, dad remained in Baghdad, where he briefly endured detention by the Saddam Hussein regime. He admits to having been a troubled child. Shades of that furious infant can be seen in his jaw-dropping turns as Ian Brady, the moors murderer, in the superb TV movie Longford; and as Ian Dury, a talented man, but no cuddly pussycat.

Serkis initially intended to become a painter. After enrolling to study art at Lancaster University, he was informed that he needed a second subject. Remembering how much he enjoyed his experiences acting at school, he edged towards the dramatic arts. A successful turn in Barrie Keeffe's Gotchasealed the deal.

While auditioning for the RSC or the National Theatre, he did, however, still have to make time to carry out his Socialist Worker duties. I assume he owned a donkey jacket.

“I did own a donkey jacket,” he laughs. “I was involved in the party for some time. It just didn’t work out with being an actor. That job demands that you empathise and see another person’s point of view. I couldn’t work those universes together the way Brecht did. I couldn’t be that black and white. The characters I play are always in a grey area.”

Like Ian Brady? Serkis has owned up that he takes his characters home with him. How did that work out when – as a father of three – he was playing a notorious murderer of children? “Whenever you play a part you are putting a bit of yourself under the microscope. Playing Brady I was examining the darkest bit of myself. He and Myra Hindley said the moment they felt most alive was when they were taking away the lives of those children. That validated their existence. You have to then transpose those feelings some way. What validates my existence? I could only think the most potent thing was witnessing the birth of my children at home.”

This is both complicated and creepy. So he places that experience in the same corner of the psyche where Brady hoarded his own memories of child murder? It’s to do with empathy, but not sympathy? “Yes. That’s right. You gather up the experiences from that moment and use them.”

Serkis’s dedication to method acting has led him to some happier places. In 1991, while working at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, he was cast opposite a young performer named Lorraine Ashbourne. The actors were playing lovers and, both at home to Stanislavski, decided to go on a date to capture some authenticity. Two decades later they are happily married.

“That’s true. We actually decided to meet in character. So we met up at this pub at the back of the station and began talking. To be honest, I think subconsciously it was just a way of getting off with one another.”

Having finally plumped for acting over painting and rabble-rousing – though he still does a bit of both – Serkis found himself in demand. Throughout the 1990s he pursued a successful career essaying earthy character roles. You will see him in Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvyand, playing Bill Sikes, in the 1999 ITV version of Oliver Twist.

Then, in 2001, The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ringbrought him a very peculiar class of fame. Everyone loved to hate Gollum and, after a while, news got around that some bloke named Serkis had acted out every one of the creature's moves. In 2004 he was terrific as Martin Hannett, Joy Division's legendary producer, in 24 Hour Party People, but you still couldn't say he had a famous face.

“That’s was a great thing for me. I don’t want to be overexposed as an actor. You can easily burn up the currency of your face. This type of acting is a way of having the creative thrill without being typecast. Gollum has been a significant part of my life. People think of me as that. But I can still play Ian Brady or Ian Dury. I can still get on the Tube without being recognised.”

Really? Surely not now. Recent high-profile turns – featuring his own face rather than a mass of pixels – have surely made him a bit of a cult hero.

I'm sure the average Lord of the Ring fanatic, having ploughed through all those DVD extras, could, without his or her spectacles, identify Serkis from the other side of a wide field during the darkest night of the year. They are the keenest of fans. He must have had a few unusual encounters.

“Oh yeah. But not in an overwhelming way. The only really fanatical thing I remember was at Disneyland a few years ago. This girl grabbed me. She was crying her eyes out. She wouldn’t let me go and she was holding me really tight. Her family had to pull her off me. Now, that was quite bizarre. I get people shouting ‘Oi, Gollum!’ from across the street. But if you can’t deal with that . . . ”

Serkis will be back as Gollum next year when the first part of Peter Jackson's bifurcated take on JRR Tolkien's The Hobbitfinally hits screens. He has finished shooting all his scenes, but, at Jackson's request, has returned to New Zealand to work as a second-unit director. He's enjoying the duties and is keen to direct his first feature.

Good luck with that. But we don’t want him to give up on the acting. Aside from anything else, after offering us an array of grotesques, it would be nice to see Serkis playing a nice guy for once. Does he not do cuddly?

“Phew! I don’t know if I can handle cuddly. As I say, the characters I love to engage with are in the morally grey area of the human condition.” He pauses for a moment. “Or other species that throw a light on that human condition.”

What an odd career this man has.

Hairy Hollywood: Apes on screen

It's ape week. Two first-class films concerning that biological superfamily – Rise of the Planet of the Apesand Project Nim– enliven a traditionally sluggish corner of the summer. Who are our favourite apes in movies and TV?

Nobody beats King Kong, the enormous gorilla who (forget the remakes) helped reinvent adventure cinema in 1933. Then of course there was Cheeta, the co-star of the Tarzanmovies. For years it was believed that the second Cheeta, now supposedly a septuagenarian, was still alive, but those claims were debunked three years ago. Boo!

The creepiest ape has to be Max in Nagisa Oshima's Max Mon Amour. That creature was depicted having an affair with poor Charlotte Rampling. Eugh! Mention must be made of the primitive primate who co-starred in Bedtime for Bonzo, but that's enough about Ronald Reagan. Ha Ha! No offence.

Let's not forget King Louie in The Jungle Book. After all, he was the king of the swingers. If Bingo from the Banana Spilts was really an ape then he counts too. And the hilariously psychedelic Mojo Jo in the surreal series The Powerpuff Girlsalso gets a nod. Dr Zaius in the first Planet of the Apesmovie. We've gone totally ape, baby.