Andy on the audience

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Andy on Hoodwink

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Andy on Sugarhouse

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Hood's bathroom

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Stills

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Hoodwink's meditation

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Looking for D

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Don't cross Hoods

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Andy Serkis official site

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0000

Interview with Andy Serkis

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0000

What drew you towards playing this kind of monster, the character, Hoodwink?

Well I’ve got a little bit of a history playing monsters but this one particularly, Hoodwink, he is a great character. Although he is ultra violent and has a short temper, what appealed to me about him is that he is very much a human being. Although he is a trained fighter and can go off at any time, you do get to see a domestic side to him with his wife, Tanya. At the beginning of the story everything is going well, he runs the estate, its his manor, but he’s also just about to have a baby. So his life could go one of two ways at the moment. His wife is trying to bring out the ‘ying’ in him, taking him away from the alpha male that he is and trying to calm him down.

There are devices in the film that humanise Hoodwink, the Buddhism, having a pregnant girlfriend, how does this affect how you play the character?

The thing that Dominic has done brilliantly with these characters is the fact that your moral judgement of them switches from one second to another. You don’t really know who your allegiances are with, where you lie morally, I think that is the power of the piece, the most important thing about it. I think it would be very unbalanced if the villain didn’t have a window of humanity because then it would be too clear cut – very black and white – that’s not interesting drama. So right at the beginning of the story you actually see him at his most tender. Then when he’s put under pressure, when the turning point of the drama happens, he is incredibly driven. He’s just like a fury for the rest of the film, but you’ve been allowed to see that tiny little window into his domestic side first.

How did you come to the project?

My agent was sent the script and I read and loved it, but I was in down mode for the first time in a long time with my family so we had to work it around some dates I’d already booked for the holiday. I drove back from Italy, sixteen hours drive, and started a seven or eight hour tattoo session and costume fitting. Filming the following morning started at 6am!
It took me a bit by surprise, the first couple of days I was really tired because the whole thing takes an immense amount of energy. Hoodwink, he’s a pressure cooker, so from the first take you’re on adrenalin. Its pretty full on stuff, you can’t really fake it, you can’t pull back on it, you can’t really half do it, you have to really go for it every single time.

You knew Gary Love before this film came along?

Yes, we’ve known each other for a long time and I’ve respected Gary’s work as an actor for a long time. He’s got a reputation as being a good actors’ director and it made perfect sense when I got this script. It was a play first, transferred onto screen so it made great sense that it was going to be directed by an actor director as it is very much a character piece. And I’ve just been blown away by him. He’s a lovely man and he creates an amazing work environment. He’s so creative about everything, his choices, he is incredibly accomplished in the way he uses the camera, in all the aspects of the filmmaking. I’ve really, really been impressed by him and he’s just great to hang around with.

How did you find working in this kind of filmmaking environment with Gary’s direction?

Often on film sets you, as an actor, fulfil a function in the whole filmmaking process, but actors are not given the space on set to get into the head space of the character and play the scene properly. That is often neglected and Gary takes that very seriously. We would always just before a take, take a moment of concentration to create that magic moment for the actor to step into the creative atmosphere and that is something that a lot of directors don’t think about, because they are focused on the shot, the look. The DOP’s are concentrating on the lighting and the way it looks, and so on, so very often the actors aren’t included in the creative process so much, they are thrown in at the last minute as if they are not part of the creation, which I think is somehow ridiculous.

Sugarhouse | Hood's House | Feed

Andy on the audience

Andy on Hoodwink

Andy on Sugarhouse

Hood's bathroom

Stills

Hoodwink's meditation

Looking for D

Don't cross Hoods

Andy Serkis official site

Interview with Andy Serkis