Andy Serkis Quotes

Character acting is a much braver pursuit than a guy who runs around and intermittently clenches his jaw muscles.

It sounds maybe a little old fashioned, but the parts I want to play and I do play, you don't want to inject too much of your own personality. What you sacrifice then is a slight mystery.

To me, there are things you're good at and things you're not so good at. For some reason, I'm good at darker characters. It has to do with how you look.

How like us is that filthy beast the ape.

I think that intelligence is such a narrow branch of the tree of life - this branch of primates we call humans. No other animal, by our definition, can be considered intelligent. So intelligence can't be all that important for survival, because there are so many animals that don't have what we call intelligence, and they're surviving just fine.

When did Jimmy Stewart not play Jimmy Stewart? When did John Wayne not play John Wayne? But that's what we like about them. When you talk about acting, you really have to respond to somebody's personality.

I think that's how any actor would make their performance convincing: by bringing an element of themselves into the character.

Not only was it necessary to get the gorillas accustomed to the bluejeaned creature who had become a part of their daily lives, it was also very necessary for me to know and recognize the particular animals of each group as the amazing individuals they were.

It's a real challenge to have someone perform a character vs. imitate a character.

I feel it's very important for an actor to believe in the character that he/she is playing and do full justice to it in order to convince others that you are the character you are portraying.

I would love to get into acting. I really enjoy acting - portraying other personalities and approaching different levels and whatnot - that would be awesome.

People like to define you through what they've seen you do. There are aspects of my personality, I guess, that come through on-screen, but I don't sit around thinking, 'I've been a bumbling suitor all my life.'

If you're going to play a brain surgeon, you just have to learn how to say the words. You don't have to go and learn how to cut open somebody's scalp. I think acting is acting. Being is something else.

You can beat on your chest, hell, any monkey can.

Even the cerebral characters I play seem to have physical quirks. They're all "physically inhabited," for lack off a better expression. For instance, Sherlock Holmes has very particular physical gestures which are drawn out in such detail.

It's fashionable for modern actors to talk about getting 'inside' a character. But you can't get to the inside without getting the outside right first.

As an actor playing a character, I can't come in with my judgement, or else I can't play it honestly. My judgement has to be reserved for later.

I'm not that complicated as an actor. I have a formula in which I work, yeah. But not like Sean Penn does. Sean is one of the few actors I know who can work like that, actually becoming the character he is playing, and get consistent results. I don't believe you can ever be someone else. You manifest different levels of your own personality to come up with a character.

I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands.

You don't have to kill somebody to play a murderer. You have to read the script and interpret the character.

A silly comedy needs a straight guy, and that guy needs to be as straight as possible. The moment you start playing straight you're not straight anymore, you're bent straight, so it really requires the usual serious, straight-forward analysis and research, looking into it and finding the dramatic function, all of what you do until you feel you've collected enough points to safely and securely play the part.

I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.

You obviously don't have to be a murderer to play a murderer or you don't have to be a dictator to play a dictator. So, you're an actor. You come up with whatever you come up with to play that part.

At some point, you have to disconnect, if the obsession with playing a real person gets in the way of the movie at large. At the same time, we're all interested, as actors in trying to get as close to the real thing as we can, and whatever you can do in order to create that transformation feels fun and, for me, the furthest I can get away from myself is fun. It's all part of the costume, the accent, and all that stuff. It's about trying to get close without it being a detriment to the point of view of the story that you're trying to tell.

I think if you play characters, it's very important not to ever tag them with any sort of disorder, or diagnose them, or whatever. You have to normalize the behavior to get inside the character.