Andy Serkis is so glad he didn’t have to wear a latex mask to portray Caesar in the ‘Planet of the Apes’ franchise.
The 50-year-old actor used motion-capture technology to play the part in ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ and this year’s follow-up ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’ but insists it would’ve filled him with "horror" if he had to wear similar costumes to the stars of the 1968 original ‘Planet of the Apes’ film.
He said: "When you think back to the originals I remember reading interviews with Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter talking about the necessity to keep their faces moving so they could get facial expressions through the latex masks that they were wearing covering their faces – and they still did an amazing job.
"The thought of having to do that in the present day fills me with horror. To have to fight through latex but that’s what performance capture allows you to do. It allows you to internalise and just be the character and behave in a naturalistic way."
While both recent ‘Planet of the Apes’ movies had some impressive special effects, Serkis insists the emphasis is still on the characters’ personalities rather than the technology being used.
He added: "In the realm of performance capture and all its potential, where it is going it only becomes more transparent and you don’t think about the technology you think about what it can do and how it enables you to tell stories.
"That happens as it gets better. Which is why this film, you don’t think about the visual effects you just think about the characters."
Andy Serkis’ latex ‘horror’
