Quotes from Andy Serkis

Performance capture is a tool that young actors will need in the next 10, 20 years. It's on the increase, as you say. It's not going away.

You could go so wrong with a 'Planet of the Apes' reboot; you could make it melodramatic, you could make it campy, you could fall into so many traps with it.

In the same way 'Lord of the Rings' was an interpretation of the book, 'The Hobbit' is being treated the same way. It will be faithfully represented with a fresh interpretation.

I'm a shockingly bad sleeper. In bed very late. Awake at the crack of dawn.

I think when actors run away from their work that they're slightly crazy, really!

In 'Tintin,' it's like a live-action role. You're living and breathing and making decisions for that character from page 1 to page 120, the whole emotional arc. In an animated movie, it's a committee decision. There are 50 people creating that character. You're responsible for a small part.

The reason that some motion-capture films don't work is if the scripts are not good, and the characters aren't engaging, then you don't believe in the journey, and you're not connected to it. It's not the technology's fault.

We've never had nannies. We've had great grandparents, great support from family, and the kids have been on every set: they've seen me play Gollum, King Kong, Captain Haddock, the lot. They totally get it, and they want to go into the business. Ruby, my daughter, is very keen to become an actress.

Climbing's always been a massive hobby of mine up until, kind of, recent times when I've had family, but no, it's been a driving passion in my life, and, uh, I've always wanted to climb the Matterhorn. It was the mountain that, sort of, inspired me to climb, as a youngster.

Yeah, I mean, climbing's always been a massive hobby of mine up until, kind of, recent times when I've had family, but no, it's been a driving passion in my life and, uh, I've always wanted to climb the Matterhorn. It was the mountain that, sort of, inspired me to climb, as a youngster. So, it was great to be able to get to do it.

After 'Kong,' my knuckles have never recovered because I had to wear very heavy weights on my forearms and around my hips and ankles to get the sense of size and scale of the movement of the character... You are telling your body that you are these things and that you're feeling these thoughts and that you're experiencing these experiences.

If I hear someone say something, and they're 100 per cent about it, then it's almost inevitable that I'll take the opposite view. I guess I feel at odds with things like society. Absolutism is always a trigger for me.

The art of transformation is a very important thing to me, and I always believe I can say something more truthful through characters that are further away from me.

But I think there's something wonderful and extraordinary about climbing on your own and just that kind of relationship to the environment. I'm very addicted to the mountains. You know, so, I do like that solitude.

If it was a great script and a great character, I would love to do a romantic comedy.

A lot of people have asked me to do answer phone messages for them.

Did you happen to catch the film I did between 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Kong?' It was a nice little Jennifer Garner comedy, '13 Going on 30,' and I play her boss. In my big scene, I get to moonwalk - pretty well, I thought - to Michael Jackson.

I've been told that some guy wrote something like, 'Andy Serkis does everything, animators do nothing.' Of course I never in a million years said that, wouldn't ever say that. It's not within my understanding of filmmaking to ever say anything like that.

My very, very first moment on set on 'Lord of the Rings' in 2000 was me in a lycra suit, six and a half thousand feet up on a mountain in New Zealand, standing in front of 250 crew who were all wondering what I was doing - myself included.

There are parts of New Zealand that I absolutely fell in love with that I will miss going back to, but I kind of think that is the part that can continue and will continue on. I don't imagine I'll stop going back to New Zealand, because I feel part of the fabric there, really.

People think, 'Oh, well how can 'The Hobbit,' which is one book, become three films?' But you can take one line from an appendice and it turns into a whole sequence.

I am a bit evangelical, I know, but performance-capture is still misunderstood.

Mountaineering has always been a huge hobby of mine.

I think I spend most of my time not living in reality, actually.