Andy Serkis: Getting under his characters' skin
Gollum as he appears in the finished film, with actor Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins in "The Lord of the Rings."
Serkis was hired originally just to provide the voice for an animated Gollum, but his physical performance on set was so convincing that director Peter Jackson went off script, and explored a means to capture the actor's physical expression as well.
Skeris said he found the guttural voice for Gollum in his kitchen: "I actually watched one of my cats, Diz, cough up a fur ball on our kitchen floor, and that was a really significant moment," he said. "Because, you know, when a cat coughs up fur balls he goes hack hack hack from the top of the head to the tip of the tail, this kind of movement happens, which I began to use. And that was how the sound began to emanate."
Credit: New Line Cinema
