Interview: Actor Andy Serkis

When it came time to shoot the scene, no-one but Serkis was available, so director Mat Whitecross went ahead and filmed the whole sequence with Serkis, and the other actors filmed their parts later. "When you see a bowl of potatoes or gravy being given to me in that scene by one of my kids, notice the hands," Serkis says. While he worked solo, members of the crew had to pass him the bowls. "Biggest hands you'll ever see on a 12-year-old," he cracks.

Dury was struck down by polio as a child, and his early years were spent in Dickensian institutions aimed at toughening up disabled children and giving them the skills they needed to achieve independence. Serkis spent six months in the gym, working out just the right side of his body, and although wearing Dury's calliper exacerbated a pre-existing back problem, it also helped him achieve the singer's distinctive lope.

"Ian had a withered left arm and left leg and classically speaking he was too old to be a rock star anyway. But what he had was a fantastic ability to write great lyrics and enormous energy. In a way he was prior to the punk movement and part of that generation," says Serkis. "The problem is that there was a schism in his life between the personal and his passion for his music."

Surviving his early setbacks, Dury came of age during punk, and was once supported by the Sex Pistols. His personality and rugged wordplay meant he was never a punk, or a conventional rock'n'roller. His influences were far wider, ranging from Eddie Cochran to Alma Cogan. Teaming up with Chas Jankel and The Blockheads helped Dury perfect his cheeky-chappy, clever-dicky musical hall persona.

In the film, Serkis takes on the vocal duties for all but one of the songs, Dury's number one, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. "He's not actually hard to do," says Serkis, who nails Dury's roughhouse baritone both in conversation and on record. "We sound similar anyway, and he's not much of a singer really."

Dury's only son Baxter Dury can be seen beside Ian on the artwork of the New Boots And Panties album as a child, and is now a singer himself. The relationship between fathers and their children is one of the themes of the film. Dury's parents split up when he was young, and Dury himself was often an absentee dad, flawed and frustrating, but in the end much missed by his children and wives, who have been supportive of Serkis and the film.

"We got a lovely e-mail from Ian's daughter after the family had seen the film, saying Ian would have loved this," says Serkis. "She said he would have laughed, and then slagged us off with great affection."

The Blockheads also approve, although one of them, after sitting through kaleidoscopic, impressionistic story, remarked wistfully: "I just wish it had begun at the beginning and finished at the end."

"I like Reasons To Be Cheerful," says Serkis, when asked to name his favourite Blockheads numbers. "'Cos he mentions John Coltrane and all his favourite things, and I love the happy nature of it and the brilliant early rap. I also like My Old Man. It's at the centre of the movie, and it's beautiful. And also because, like Baxter Dury, I had an old man I didn't see very often."

Serkis felt his father's absence keenly as a child. Raised in Ruislip, west London with his three sisters and brother, for the first ten years of his life his Iraqi-born father chose to live and work in Baghdad. In the summer, the family would visit him for holiday breaks until Dr Sekissian returned to Britain for good in 1978.

"We were outsiders and I've always sympathised with those who feel excluded, probably as a result of this. Working for others is also something my parents instilled in us. My mum worked at a school for disabled kids, so there was a strong sense of the importance of helping other people. My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an actor. They wanted me to be a lawyer, but they came around."

Serkis came to acting relatively late, while studying visual arts at Lancaster University. In his final year, someone recognised that their alert stagehand and designer had acting potential and cast him in the lead in Gotcha, as a schoolboy who kidnaps his teachers and holds them hostage. From there he became a fixture on TV, film and stage, working steadily but going unremarked until 1999, when he accepted what he thought was a three-week job on a fantasy film. At that point he hadn't read Lord Of The Rings. Four years later, he returned from working and living in New Zealand with his family to find himself anointed the "go-to" guy for a performance capture work. For King Kong he "trashed" his hands by running about on all fours to play the gorilla and it took him months to drop the habit of leaning on his knuckles to get up in the morning. Gollum, who he likens to a heroin addict, took even longer to shake, although he indicated he's more than happy about reprising the role for Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit.

In interviews, it's immediately obvious why he works so well in this genre; Serkis has a mobile face that just doesn't stop working, even when he's listening. In the upcoming Tintin, a 3D motion capture extravaganza intended as a trilogy, Serkis had the advantage over co-stars Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost, as Pegg has acknowledged .

"He's just the guv'nor," said Pegg. "He's clearly at ease with the whole business, although I was reassured to see that even he doesn't look cool in spandex. Mind you, even Daniel Craig had problems rocking that look." Tintin's three films are to be split between Peter Jackson and Stephen Spielberg, with Serkis playing the boy reporter's salty chum Captain Haddock. He's been sworn to secrecy over the details, and it takes a lot of coaxing before he will even agree that the films will be "very much within the style of the Herg books."

The enormous financial success of Lord Of The Rings did not trickle down to him, he says. He and his actress wife Lorraine still live in London with their three children and a mortgage but the bonus of performance capture is that they can walk their kids to school or take the tube relatively unrecognised. And yet he must feel some dissatisfaction at the way his extraordinarily expressive Gollum has split credit. There were rumours of an Oscar nomination during Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, until the American Academy announced that digital performances were excluded because they involved technical manipulation.

"Actors' performances in films are enhanced in a million different ways, down to the choice of camera shot by the director, whether it's in slow motion or whether it's quick cut," counters Serkis. "Actors' performances do not stand alone in any film, and performance capture's no different. Any sort of role requires a certain amount of research and embodiment of the character and psychological investigation. Yes, there is a certain amount of enhancement, but it doesn't alter the nature of the performance." Perhaps Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll will remind the Academy that there's nothing unnatural or artificial about his talent. v

This article first appeared in Scotland on Sunday on 3 January, 2010