Why Andy Serkis Deserved All The Awards For His Gollum Portrayal

In 2001, Ian McKellen was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for The Fellowship of the Ring, playing Gandalf the Grey. He didn’t win, but it was really the first time that the Academy had even acknowledged the performance of an actor in a fantasy film, and that makes it pretty important. He was also nominated for a BAFTA that year, and again in 2003 for The Return of the King.

It’s easy enough to figure out why; for the Academy and the British Academy, Ian McKellen was the safest option. He wouldn’t upset the status quo any more than it already was. The Lord of the Rings films were so transformative of their genre, received so many nominations in other categories, that it would have seemed remiss of them to not acknowledge the cast at least once. So the Academy did it once, with McKellen, just to tick the box. The British Academy did it twice. The Golden Globes, interestingly, never gave a nomination to any of the cast, despite being the major award that you might expect it from the most. And that’s it, for the three most important awards ceremonies: three nods for Gandalf.

To be controversial for a minute, or maybe not, depending on your opinion, but I don’t think that McKellen did anything spectacular in either of those films, and probably didn’t deserve those nominations. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Lord of the Rings with all of my heart, and I think that every single member of those insanely huge casts worked hard at their roles. The thing is though, because it is such a large ensemble piece, I don’t think anyone of them really had a chance to stand out, and neither should they have. It was supposed to be about the fellowship, the making and the breaking of the group, and that’s what the films excelled at. Everyone played their parts beautifully, but none of them was more important than any other. Some of them were nominated for smaller awards, particularly Viggo Mortensen for Aragorn and Sean Astin for Sam, and they even won a handful of them, but it still doesn’t sit right with me. It wasn’t about the individual.

That is, save for one character. The only acting performance that should have been acknowledged by the big three awards came in The Two Towers, ironically the only film of the three that didn’t generate an Oscar, BAFTA or Golden Globes nomination. That character is Gollum, and that actor is the incomparable Andy Serkis.

Serkis did get a few nominations for small awards, for both The Two Towers and The Return of the King, but I think it is a travesty that he didn’t get recognised by any of the bigger players. In The Two Towers, he plays two wildly different characters, and he does it so well. A little twitch of his face and you know if you’re dealing with the benevolent Sméagol or the dangerous Gollum. The slightest change in the pitch of his voice does the same thing. When he is on the screen, nothing else matters. There’s a real sense of menace in his physical presence; when Gollum is temporarily banished in The Two Towers and Sméagol wins the battle for dominance, there is no chance to relax as a viewer – Gollum is always there, just behind Sméagol’s smiling face.

Serkis’ performance is a masterclass in subtlety that would be impressive even if he hadn’t done the whole thing in a ridiculous bodysuit with sensors stuck all over his face. If you spend any time watching the behind the scenes documentaries, you can see how he transforms himself into Gollum. He went pretty method, as far as these things go and we all know how much the Academy loves someone being method – Heath Ledger’s Joker, anyone?

We also know how obsessed they are with actors portraying characters with disabilities and mental health problems, however gross those performances might be. Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump? Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man? With the years of hindsight, Hanks’ silly voice and Hoffman’s stereotypical take on autism are both a bit of a pantomime, and ones that make uncomfortable viewing these days. Even Colin Firth’s stammer in The King’s Speech skates a bit close to the line. I’m not suggesting that Serkis was playing a character with a disability, because he wasn’t, and it would be offensive to claim that he was. What I am suggesting is that he was playing a character who, in any other film, especially one with a contemporary setting, would be described as having mental health problems. For the predictable Academy and their awards cronies, it would be a lauded performance, if it happened anywhere but in The Lord of The Rings, and it might ironically have been one of the few performances of that kind which actually deserved the accolades. Serkis was able to explore Gollum, a highly sympathetic character, in the safe space of a fantasy film, and I can’t imagine that his performance offended anyone (although if I am wrong, please tell me!).

Serkis was, as I said, nominated for ten small individual awards for his performances in The Two Towers and The Return of the King, of which he won five, and those were very much deserved. But in 2002, John C Reilly was nominated by the Academy for his role in Chicago, and he would be the first person I’d kick out to make room for Serkis, before you even consider any of the others. As for the BAFTAs, in 2001 the Best Supporting Actor category included Robbie Coltrane’s Hagrid and Colin Firth’s Mark Darcy, as well as Eddie Murphy’s Donkey in Shrek, the only nomination ever for a voice actor. In 2003, Bill Nighy won it for Billy Mack in Love Actually. Are you honestly telling me that any of those performances were actually better than the one Serkis gave in 2002? No, they’re not, and they prove that the British Academy could have nominated him. They had even more reason than the Academy, what with Serkis being one of their own. Instead they gave nominations to a handful of predictable performances by actors who had all given better ones in other films. And the year before they gave a nomination to an animated donkey. Murphy was good, but no better than he’s ever been in anything else.

We all know what ultimately stopped Serkis receiving any of the nominations that he deserved. He wasn’t on the screen and so he wasn’t important enough to count. If you watch those films now, Gollum has aged incredibly well bearing in mind they started using that motion capture technology way back in 1999 when filming began on the series. He was too ahead of his time as a character, and so Serkis was too ahead of his time in giving that kind of performance. He was never going to make that shortlist for Best Supporting Actor – it was too much of a stretch to imagine the very real actor behind the technology. Much easier to give a nod to, and then quietly ignore, the familiar and safe Ian McKellen.

With Gollum, Serkis gave what is one of his greatest ever performances, and if he had done it a decade later, I think he would have received at least some of the recognition that he deserved.