You've seen and not seen him, creeping along the slimy stones in hot pursuit of hobbits or hanging around the Empire State Building. But though Andy Serkis has breathed life into iconic characters, some of his most recognizable scenes have involved his demise.
"I'm going to cut a show reel together of my great death scenes. I think it could be a bestseller," says Serkis with a deep-voiced laugh. After all, he has taken a swim in the fires of Mt. Doom in his performance-capture role as Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" and, perhaps even more memorably, plunged to his death as Kong (not to mention that in his small -- human -- role as a cook in "King Kong," he was eaten head-first by a ravenous worm.)
"That's a pretty good one," Serkis says of becoming worm food. "My son's been traumatized by that for years. He was about 5 when he saw that. The Freudian nature of his father's death by CG hasn't left him, really."
Serkis, very much alive, is calling from New York, where he's promoting his new fantasy film "Inkheart." Based on the novel by German author Cornelia Funke, it concerns Silvertongues -- otherwise ordinary people who can bring written stories to life by reading them aloud. In the film, Silvertongue Mo (Brendan Fraser) is searching for his missing wife and is menaced by Serkis' Capricorn, a character brought to life from the book "Inkheart" who is determined to stay in the "real" world and harness Mo's power.
The villain has ramrod-straight posture and a hard, shark-like smile suggesting a forced -- and brutally enforced -- humor. As with Serkis' best-known performances, it's that physicality that jumps out at the viewer, but those polished surfaces are just the tip of a carefully considered portrayal that adds brittle dimension to an otherwise simple movie.
"Capricorn, in the medieval world of the book, is a gopher, really," Serkis says. "He's really low status. He lives in the woods, he's pretty much filthy and not very finessed. He hates that about himself and is full of anger about the fact that he's been dealt a bum deck. When he gets dragged into the modern world, he absolutely adores everything it has to offer in terms of material gain.
"So he refines himself -- he would have had elocution classes and been taught to stand much in the way that, for instance, Adolf Hitler was taught by an actor how to speak and how to orate."
