Andy Serkis says an AI Gollum would not be as good

Andy Serkis says an AI-generated Gollum or King Kong would not be as good as the performances actors gave.

Serkis is the actor behind some of the most technically demanding characters in modern film. He played Gollum in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and the ape Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboot. All three were built on performance capture, which records an actor's facial expressions and body movement and uses them to drive a digital character.

He made the comments speaking to LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, in an interview LBC published on November 11, 2026.

Serkis said AI has potential uses in film and in other industries, including medicine, but he warned against storytelling that is not shaped by people. He said: "Anything that isn't touched by a human brain or hand, within a storytelling context, I think is probably dangerous. But I do think there are uses for AI in film."

Asked whether an AI version of King Kong or Gollum would be as effective, Serkis said: "I really don't think it would, because it's not created," and added, "it's not authored."

"As actors, we are custodians of roles," he said. "You'll have someone play Hamlet, you'll have another actor play it in a completely different way. It's touched by the human brain, and that is what gives it its interest."

The line Serkis draws, between a generated image and an authored performance, is one he has argued for years. In an interview with the Times that Variety reported on November 8, 2026, he said performances like Gollum "are authored by an actor in the same way a prosthetics team engineered John Hurt in 'The Elephant Man.'" He called the technology "misunderstood" and said he had stopped trying to convert people to it: "I used to be evangelical. I've talked for hours about how performance capture is acting and watched eyes glaze over, but life's too short. I calmed down. Now I just think, 'If you get it? Great.'"

Serkis has also said motion capture deserves the same recognition as any other acting. In a July 2026 interview with Variety, he said: "If we teach AI well, then it can help us across many industries," while arguing that AI cannot yet replicate the "authored performance" that goes into a motion-capture role. That argument has a cost. In May, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson said the worry around AI is one reason Serkis has not been honored for playing Gollum. "I don't think a Gollum-type character or a generated character has any hope for winning any awards," Jackson said, adding that Serkis's work "is not an AI-generated performance. It's a human-generated performance 100% of the way."

Serkis is not against AI in his own films. He has said he uses it in a limited way for de-aging in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, the film he is directing and starring in as Gollum.

Serkis's view leaves room for AI as a tool while holding that a character has to be authored by an actor.

The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum is scheduled to open in theaters on December 17, 2027.