CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Some people came to The Lord of the Rings without the weight of expectation, as a virtual blank slate. Andy Serkis was one of them. It seems strange to say that now, for if any single actor is likely to be associated with the trilogy for the remainder of his career (and perhaps well beyond), it’s Andy, the man who so vividly and brilliantly portrayed the doomed hobbit Smeagol and his duplicitous, computer-generated alter ego, Gollum.

“Portrayed” is precisely the right word, for while Andy’s face appears only in the prologue to the third film, The Return of the King, it would be unfair to say that he did not contribute as much to the development of his character as the other actors on the project did to theirs. Indeed, he may well have contributed more. Certainly his wasn’t simply a “voice-over assignment,” as such performances are too often described. In many ways Andy’s was the most demanding and rewarding role in the trilogy, and there’s no question that he earned the adulation of fans and the critical acclaim that came his way in the wake of the final film. But I don’t know if anyone expected him to be quite as good as he was. In fact, I’m not sure anyone even thought he’d be that important a player in the grand scheme of things.

The story often told is that Andy was originally hired for three weeks of work, that he received a call from his agent asking him if he was interested in providing the voice for Gollum in a new adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Andy’s response? “There must be a lot of proper parts in there; can’t I get one of those instead?”

An understandable sentiment really, since Andy is a classically trained actor. I mean, if you heard that The Lord of the Rings was being made into a movie, Gollum wouldn’t necessarily be the role you’d want to play, now would it? Sure, he’s one of the best characters in the book and one of my favorites, but how do you bring him to life? Andy couldn’t be faulted for wanting something apparently more substantial and serious. As it rather famously turned out, however, Gollum was the flashiest role in the franchise, providing Andy with the star vehicle of a lifetime and not just three weeks of employment, but three years! He returned to New Zealand on several occasions, far more frequently, in fact, than did the rest of the cast.

While Gollum is a computer-generated (CG) creature, he is very much based on the movements and expressions of Andy Serkis. This was apparent to Andy from the outset, and so he quickly became a powerful and emphatic ambassador for the character. I’m sure the CG animators would cringe if they read here that they somehow contributed less to the character of Gollum than Andy did, or that they were less enthusiastic about the character. I know they worked tirelessly and looked at Gollum as a great literary character and scene-stealing cinematic creation. Nevertheless, I’d be shocked to discover there has ever been a moment in the history of movies when an actor has gone to the workstations of the animators—some two hundred in all!—hunched over their computers for hours on end, and talked through the emotional nuances of each and every scene. Andy did that, and he was demonstrably frustrated and disappointed if he met even one animator who seemed not to match his own level of commitment, or who failed for some reason to grasp the real drama of the performance. Without Andy there—flopping about in ice-cold streams, rolling down the sides of mountains, and torturing his body and voice for the sake of a performance that would not even reward him with the actor’s most profound currency, face time on screen—Gollum might have been little more than a two-dimensional foil for Sam and Frodo. But Andy wasn’t about to let that happen. Nor was Peter.

We were deep into the production process by the time Andy arrived in New Zealand, or at least by the time I first met him. A lot has been written about how Andy was with us (and by “us,” I mean the hobbits) every step of the way, but that’s not really true. Because of the intense nature of his postproduction work, it’s quite possible that if you added up the total number of days on location, Andy spent more time in New Zealand than we did. But there were great chunks of time when we did not see him and did not work with him. In terms of scheduling and shooting, the films were approached in roughly chronological order, but then a lot of things were added and moved to take advantage of locations and travel schedules. By the time Andy arrived, the über-movement of the production had gotten roughly to the second film, although that didn’t really mean anything. For example, I met Andy at the Grand Chateau, a spectacular hotel at the foot of Mount Ruapehu in the Tongariro National Park. We usually stayed at the Grand Chateau while we were filming scenes set in and around Mordor. Such was the case on this day, when we were scheduled to shoot a scene involving Gollum, Frodo, and Sam—a scene intended for the third movie. I don’t even remember the precise scene, but I do recall quite vividly the impression made by Andy.

For one thing (in stark contrast to my portly self), he was in terrific physical condition. Andy is an avid and accomplished rock climber, so he’s extremely sinewy and strong, and really intense. Shaking his hand, feeling his grip, staring into his wide and expressive eyes, I couldn’t believe how focused he seemed to be—it was almost like he was ready to explode. While Gollum provides a good deal of comic relief as well as pathos to The Lord of the Rings, the man behind the character is not exactly a laugh a minute.

“Pleased to meet you, Sean,” he said, his face inches from mine, so close I could feel the heat coming off his skin. It wasn’t just a normal business introduction. It was an interaction. “Looking forward to working with you, mate!”

Whoaaaaa. I’d better say something good here, because this guy is paying attention.

It was clear that Andy was extraordinarily fired up about being part of the production, which I found somewhat fascinating, because after all he was only Gollum. The way I saw it (incorrectly, of course), the poor guy was doomed to be disappointed, for he was going to be replaced by a digital image. Little did I know—little did anyone know—just how impressive an actor Andy would be, and what a groundbreaking performance he would achieve. What I did know was this: he had come to work. He understood that this was a big, important project, and he wanted to make it clear that he was equal to the task.

Although there was an element of mystery surrounding the computer-generated effects so heavily employed in The Lord of the Rings, I thought I had a reasonably good handle on how these things were done, at least on a fundamental level. I knew there would be blue screens and a stick with a tennis ball attached to the end (simulating what would later become a computer-generated image). I felt in my gut that I was probably better equipped to adapt to the circumstances than most other actors. Not because I had a wealth of experience in similarly effects-laden projects—I did not—but simply because I had a pretty good imagination and I’d seen enough movies to know how it was supposed to be done, or at least how it was not supposed to be done. You can tell when an actor is uncomfortable playing alongside a CG image—he’s never looking quite in the right direction. I knew that much before the start of principal photography, and I quickly figured out how to be a part of the technology, instead of struggling against it. I liked doing mime work, which is basically what CG work is. So I was confident about what we were going to do.

As it turned out, none of the actors, including me, had any idea about how it was going to work, or how much of our trust was placed in the hands of the animators and the tech wizards (and the editors, and the composer, and so on). By and large, it was a lot of fun, and I felt privileged to be there, to be a part of something so revolutionary that it would change the way movies were made. I think we all felt that way, including Andy, who seemed in the first few days content with doing dialogue off camera. But then it became clear that Peter wanted us to rehearse, to make the scenes stronger, and to work out any kinks in the story or dialogue exactly as we did in other scenes.

In theory, this was fine; in practice, it dramatically altered the level of participation expected of Andy. Suddenly he was no longer just a guy standing off to the side, out of the frame, shouting lines of dialogue for a computer-generated Gollum. Now Andy was in the scene, rehearsing the part of Gollum. Andy naturally enjoyed this, but the intense nature of his personality and his relentless pursuit of artistic perfection eventually caused a strain. A horribly awkward dynamic developed wherein Andy looked at his work in the movie as the definitive portrayal of Gollum, as opposed to merely a model of what Gollum was supposed to be like. He was passionate about it and committed to it, and he wasn’t going to let anybody be dismissive of it.

Andy was no wallflower, either. He wasn’t about to just sit quietly, playing cards or napping, waiting for someone to call his name so that he could step up to a microphone and deliver his lines off camera. Not at all. He advocated for his character and for himself as an artist. Andy felt the best way to bring Gollum to life was to act out each and every movement, to give the animators as much ammunition as possible. The voice might have been enough, because the voice is absolutely stunning, so raspy and haunting and tortured. So utterly creepy. (By the way, that is Andy’s voice. It’s not a technological trick. It’s all him. I’ve said to him, “Andy, you may get sick of it, but no one else does. How does it feel to know you can kill in any room the rest of your life?” Long after the rest of us have stopped signing autographs at science fiction and fantasy conventions, Andy will still be getting invitations to do Gollum. The split personality is perfect for functions like the MTV Awards—“Smeagol loves MTV; no, MTV sucks!”—where he can insult people and then apologize for insulting them. He’s got a built-in gimmick, applicable to any setting, any routine.) But Andy wanted to provide more than just a voice; he wanted to embody the character, just as I had embodied Sam or Elijah had embodied Frodo. Even more so, in fact, given the psychological complexity of Gollum.

You can’t blame him for feeling that way, and you can’t possibly dispute the results. Gollum is an unforgettable character, and Andy deserves an enormous share of the credit for that accomplishment. Getting there, however, was a clunky process. For one thing, there was no comfortable lexicon for how to communicate. So we’d rehearse a scene—we’d shoot it with Andy—and the director would call that shot, the one with both Andy and another actor, the “reference pass.” The original motivation for shooting Andy on-screen with us was simply to give the animators something to watch and then recreate on their computers. It was beneficial for the other actors, too, because it facilitated the performance to have another actor standing in front of you. In most movies, though, that approach is cost-prohibitive. You have a crew on the clock, and with each take, each rehearsal, resources are diminishing. Time, after all, is money. But the truth is, the performance is infinitely better when you rehearse the action before miming it. Elijah and I would have the scene choreographed and coded in our minds when Andy would step off, and we were grateful for that. Unfortunately, Andy’s feelings would inevitably be crushed because Peter or one of the assistant directors would say something like, “Okay, nice job on the reference pass. Now let’s do a real one.”

“What do you mean, a real one? That’s my performance!”

Even though no disrespect was intended (everyone admired Andy’s work, as well as his work ethic), I felt for him. He acted his heart out. It was a challenging and unique situation: I wanted to honor my fellow performer, this guy who was crawling around on the floor in his green Lycra bodysuit, trashing his voice, screaming and crying and emoting, giving it his all on every take—but it was almost distracting at times. I wanted to recognize and applaud Andy’s work, but it was difficult to throw myself into the scene, to not hold anything back, when I knew I’d have to do it again for “real” a few minutes later. Virtually every word uttered by Gollum was recorded by Andy off camera, or added later during looping sessions (or both). It’s fair to point out, however, that an enormous percentage of the dialogue in The Lord of the Rings was looped—probably as much as ninety percent. On a normal film, that figure is closer to ten percent. On any project there is an eternal battle between the sound mixer saying, “Hey you don’t have a clean track,” and the director saying, “Well, I want the performances to be natural and organic, so let them go and we’ll overlap later.” Bits and pieces from different tracks are eventually spliced together and layered, until something close to perfection is achieved. It’s a painstaking process, complicated even further on this production because of the presence of Gollum.

I don’t know if Elijah would agree with this, but over time I found myself trying to conserve my energy during both rehearsals and first few takes, so that I could give it my all on the reference passes, not so much for the animators, because they weren’t going to be animating me, but simply out of respect for Andy. It was a point my mother drove home when I was just eight years old and working as a professional actor for the first time, on an Afterschool Special called Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom. My mother was the star of that movie, and at one point she became infuriated with me for relaxing a bit too much during another actor’s close-up. I didn’t know any better at the time. My job, I thought, was to sit there quietly, out of frame, and listen to the other actor. No big deal. Mom thought otherwise.

“You should be better off-screen than you are on-screen, do you understand me?” she admonished. “That’s your responsibility to your fellow performer.”

She taught me at that moment that you give just as much, if not more, when you’re off-camera, and to this day I’m always better off camera than on. I don’t know why, whether it’s because I don’t have to worry about how I look, or whether it’s just a point of pride. I do know that something happens on camera; if you’re sophisticated and aware of the camera, you want to be good at that and lose yourself in the part. It’s highly egocentric. When you’re not on camera, and you really emote and play the part, it’s just the opposite: it’s all about the other actor. The degree to which you are willing to open an emotional vein in support of the other actor is directly related to the amount of respect you have for him or her. I felt like I needed to be there for Andy, to honor the energy he emitted—and by the way, it was a level of intensity that was about five thousand degrees hotter than anything I’d ever experienced. White hot. I don’t doubt for a second that Andy’s strength and focus, his seriousness of purpose, improved the performances of everyone who worked with him.

I hear people talk about intensity all the time within the context of sports. There are very few athletes capable of peak intensity every day. Some days, it just isn’t there. They’re still professional, they still do the work, but they’re just not quite as intense. Well, it’s the same thing in acting. There were days when Elijah and I—I point to him only because I did just about every scene with him, and we both did an enormous amount of work with Andy—lacked intensity. Not merely because of the extended length of the production, but also because of the way our characters were approached, the way certain shots were designed. It was clear that we were doing a lot more work than would end up on the screen, and even though we wanted to do our utmost for Peter and the movie, it was impossible not to slow down and take a deep breath once in a while.

When Andy showed up, though, it was like, Holy shit! Who is this guy? Peter, in particular, wanted to reward Andy for his commitment, for his unflagging approach to the character of Gollum. Unlike Ian McKellen, who was so clever in his ability to encourage Fran and Peter and Philippa to bend the story based on his ideas, and unlike Viggo, who would just engage in creative trench warfare by continually coming at them with suggestions until he whittled them down, Andy was the sturdiest and most loyal of soldiers. He was willing to do whatever was asked of him, so long as everyone understood that he was not just providing the voice of Gollum. He was a real actor. He was an artist.

Fran loved writing for Andy, especially the schizophrenic stuff, and Peter liked having fun with that. He liked it for all the reasons the audience likes it: the arguing back and forth, the humor and the pathos. But it didn’t come easily to Andy, regardless of how effortless it might appear to be on the screen. He suffered perhaps more than anyone else on the film (with the possible exception of John Rhys-Davies), and he did so willingly. I think Peter loved that about Andy, and I can’t say that I blame him. Billy Boyd and Andy Serkis have something in common: they’re both serious actors, and they’re both really happy practicing their craft. There is something unique about the way they approach acting—and their lives. There is a selflessness about them that I envy. Andy is honest about when he’s feeling competitive, or when he needs to assert himself. He’s never sneaky or underhanded, and he’s thoroughly devoted to doing the best work he can possibly do, and to helping everyone else rise to the occasion.

Billy has a similar attitude and drive, although it feels different to be around him, probably because he’s slightly less intense, at least on the outside. In both cases, though, there is an admirable and palpable commitment to acting, and it was clear that Peter liked and respected it (as almost any director would), and wanted them to shine in the movie because of it. I think Peter recognized my talent and honestly knew that I wanted to do well, but I also think my level of awareness about how movies are made and the politics behind the making of movies prompted him to view me in a different light. That’s a roundabout way of saying that at times I was a pain in the ass, which isn’t quite as worthy a thing to honor.

My two favorite characters, as written by Tolkien, are Treebeard and Gollum; in the movies, they’re showy parts that provide almost limitless options. But to be the other guy in the scenes with those characters, well, that’s a challenge, too. When Fran and Philippa started writing for the complexity of the emotional triangle between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, when they started fleshing that out, it felt good. But sometimes we’d do scenes that were basically excuses for Gollum to perform a monologue, and that required patience on the part of the other actors. Most of the time I didn’t mind, and in fact wanted to do whatever I could to assist Andy, to make his seemingly thankless on-set task easier. I must admit, however, that there were other times, when I was feeling downtrodden and underappreciated (and fat, too, really fat, which exacerbated my mood swings) because my character was getting short shrift, that I suffered from a dose of Gollum envy.

There is, for example, a scene in The Two Towers in which Gollum stops Sam and Frodo as they’re about to try to sneak through the Black Gates of Mordor and says, “There’s a better way. We’ll take the stairs.”

Well, Andy is a strong guy, and he’s also a littler bigger than I am, so when we’d do fight scenes it wasn’t unusual for him to inflict actual pain. Even apparently benign scenes, such as this one, held the potential for discomfort. As Andy grabbed me by the collar and pulled me back, he caught a fistful of hair and yanked my wig off. Now, this was not an easy thing to do. This was not a “hairpiece”; it was an anchored wig. The makeup artists would slick back our hair and glue the wiglace on. They’d twist the real hair on the top and in back, and tie it off with rubber bands. Then they’d put a wig on top and insert pins through the wiglace and anchor those into the rubber bands. The end result was a wig that wouldn’t move in a hurricane.

But there I was, sitting on my fat butt in front of the stunned cast and crew, wigless and white and wounded, looking and feeling suddenly like a star from the silent-movie era (“I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!”). What I should have done was laugh it off. I should have given Andy a pat on the back and said, “No hard feelings” or “Dude, lay off the caffeine!” I mean, it didn’t hurt that bad. It was just embarrassing. But I was tired and frustrated, so I got up and, without saying a word to anyone, walked off the set and headed for the makeup area. In truth, it was the most efficient way to get back to working, but I did walk off in a bit of a huff, which was pretty silly, considering Andy hadn’t done anything wrong. He was supposed to grab me hard; I wanted him to grab me hard. It wasn’t his fault that my wig came off, and I should have said so. I didn’t, though, and my lack of courtesy really pissed him off.

“Sorry, man,” he snapped. “It wasn’t on purpose, you know?”

I did know, and I told Andy as much when I returned, with a new wig and a better attitude firmly in place.