You might not know Andy Serkis by name, and chances are you probably don’t know his face, either. But in reality, this seemingly-unknown actor is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood:
Look familiar? Well, how about now?
Closer, but still not ringing a bell? Okay, one more:
There we go.
That’s right, Andy Serkis is none other than the actor who portrayed Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. Oh and also he was Kong in the 2005 King Kong, Caesar in the two new Planet of the Apes films, and he’ll be an alien of some kind in Star Wars: Episode VII.
He’s basically the king of motion-capture acting- when you need someone to strap on one of those goofy blue suits and create an unbelievably lifelike digital creature, you call Serkis.
And recently, Serkis let something big slip. In an interview with Variety, Serkis was asked about his work with the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron (his company, The Imaginarium, does visual effects consulting), and Serkis accidentally broke some big news: “I’m playing a role.”
Variety tried to press the issue (what kind of role? Live action, or computer generated?) but Serkis kept his mouth shut from then on. Still, it’s hard to imagine that Joss Whedon would hire the world’s top motion capture actor for a big, effects-heavy blockbuster and then not use him for something big and effects-heavy.
But what’s he going to play? We already know that Ultron, Vision and Thanos will show up somewhere, but all those roles have actors to back them up. Personally, my guess is that it’s the Hulkbuster-
But I guess we’ll find out next summer, won’t we?
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