Which actor played Gollum in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings?

Andy Serkis played Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He supplied the character’s voice and performance, which was transformed into a computer-generated figure through motion capture, animation, and digital compositing.

Gollum was once Sméagol, a Hobbit-like figure who found and possessed the One Ring for centuries. Its influence warped his body and mind, creating the divided personality seen in the films. Serkis’s performance made that conflict visible through Gollum’s posture, facial expressions, movements, vocal mannerisms, and conversations between “Gollum” and “Sméagol.”

The character is briefly glimpsed in The Fellowship of the Ring, then becomes central in The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Serkis reprised the role in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. A common mix-up is calling Gollum a conventional live-action makeup performance: although Serkis acted on set and provided the creative basis, the final trilogy character is CGI. His work helped establish motion-capture acting as a major screen performance technique.