Andy Serkis was advised not to play Gollum in The Lord of the Rings

In 2001, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings books were finally treated to the splashy big screen adaptation they deserved when Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring hit theaters. Elijah Wood was Frodo Baggins, Sean Astin was Samwise Gamgee, Viggo Mortensen was Aragorn…it was good times.

Andy Serkis also showed up as the voice of Gollum, a pitiful creature bend and twisted by the One Ring who follows Frodo wherever he goes. It wasn’t until The Two Towers the following year when this character would really get his time in the spotlight, brought to life with a combination of Serkis’ now-iconic performance and cutting edge motion-capture suit.

Sadly, Serkis was overlooked by the Academy when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was showered with awards in 2004. In fact, none of the actors took home the gold. As far as Serkis is concerned, the Academy just didn’t know what to do with an actor in a mo-cap role.

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine the trilogy without Serkis in it, but he nearly wasn’t. Telling a story during the virtual Lord of the Rings cast reunion hosted by Josh Gad, Serkis described getting a fateful phone call.

“It was an interesting one,” . Because when I first heard from my agent this was happening, it was just like, ‘Andy, look, they’re doing this amazing kind of film of Lord of the Rings down in New Zealand. They’d like to see you for a voice for a digital character.’ I was like, ‘A what?’ I remember I was in Prague working on an adaptation of Oliver Twist actually and I said to this other actor I was working with, ‘I think I may be going down to New Zealand to do this digital character.’ He said, ‘Well, is your face going to be on screen?’ I said, ‘No, it’s not.’ He said, ‘Mate, I wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole.’”

In 2001, motion capture technology was largely unheard of, so it’s understandable that Serkis’ pal would try and warn him off of it. Thankfully, he ignored that advice and we got Gollum in all of his glory. Even so, as Serkis tells it, Peter Jackson himself wasn’t sure if they could pull it off.

"Pete [Jackson] did say, ‘I’m not exactly sure how this is going to happen, but we’re trying out this new methodology called motion capture. You know, we want someone to be on set, to be Gollum, but not you know, no actor could be actually how we envision him.’"

Jackson confirmed that Serkis had the right of it. “[I]n our imaginations we didn’t understand even with ourselves whether this technology was going to hit.”

Serkis went on to create a niche for himself in Hollywood as a mo-cap actor. He played King Kong in 2005’s King Kong, Caesar in The Planet of the Apes trilogy, reprised the role of Gollum in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, was behind Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, and so on. 

Taking it a step further, Serkis even founded The Imaginarium Studios with film producer Jonathan Cavendish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age), where he works with cutting-edge digital and motion capture technology for movies, television and video games. And on top of that, he’s directing the highly anticipated sequel to Venom.

Good thing he ignored his friend’s advice.

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h/t Cinemablend