Andy Serkis: 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' Deserves Oscar Nomination

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

7:21 AM PDT 8/12/2011 by Lindsay Powers

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Courtesy of Weta

Andy Serkis, who plays the apes in Rise in the Planet of the Apes, thinks the Academy is overlooking actors who work in motion-capture suits.

"I am a bit evangelical, I know, but performance-capture is still misunderstood," he tells the UK Daily Guardian. "Ten years down the line, people say, 'Oh, so you did the voice of Gollum?' Or people go, 'You did the movements for [King]Kong?' It's frustrating, because I play Gollum and I play [King] Kong. It is acting."

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"The emotional content of these performances live and die by what the actors bring to the roles on set. I never approach a live-action role any differently to a performance-captured role. The process of acting is absolutely identical," he added in a second interview with the BBC.

"It should be recognized that there are two parts to the process. The first part is capturing the performance. Only later down the line do you start seeing the characters being painted over frame by frame using pixels," he said.

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Serkis does not think a special category should be created at the Oscars.

"Performance-capture technology is really the only way that we could bring these characters to life," he said. "It's the way that Gollum was brought to life, and King Kong, and the Na'vi in Avatar and so on and it's really another way of capturing an actor's performance. That's all it is, digital make-up."

Rise of the Planet of the Apes may still come in at No. 1 at the weekend box office. It's up against The Help, Destination 5, Glee: The 3D Concert Movie and 30 Minutes or Less.