Andy Serkis voiced and performed the motion capture for Gollum in Peter Jackson’s films.
Serkis first played Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, released in 2002, and continued in The Return of the King. He later reprised the character in The Hobbit films. His performance combined spoken dialogue, physical acting, and digital effects to create the divided former hobbit known as Sméagol and Gollum.
Gollum’s appearance was created by Weta Digital, but Serkis supplied the character’s movement, voice, and emotional performance. The role became an important milestone in the development and public acceptance of performance capture for major dramatic characters.
The character’s history comes from Tolkien’s mythology: Sméagol found the One Ring, which corrupted him over centuries and transformed him into Gollum. Serkis’s work is sometimes described simply as voice acting, but the performance involved much more than recording dialogue.