Andy Serkis: Hollywood & Video Games Merge

For decades, a cultural chasm separated Hollywood and the video game industry, with many traditional actors viewing game roles as beneath them. According to Andy Serkis, that divide is closing fast. Speaking to Variety about his role in Sandfall’s critically acclaimed RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Serkis expressed genuine excitement for the project. “I love the visual of it,” he said. “I just thought it was beautiful.”

A Craftsman’s View

Serkis, best known for his groundbreaking motion-capture performance as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, sees no essential difference between acting for a game and acting for film, stage, or television. “You approach the character and build the character in the same way,” he explained. His comfort with game performance dates back to an early role in Ninja Theory’s Heavenly Sword for PlayStation 3 — a project that placed him at the intersection of acting and interactive technology long before such work became common.

From Snobbery to Ambition

The attitude toward game acting has shifted markedly, Serkis observes. When he worked on Heavenly Sword, many actors dismissed video games as beneath their craft. Today, the situation is inverted: “Young actors are coming out of drama schools, and they’re like, ‘I really wanna be in a video game.’” That reversal reflects not only changing tastes but a broader recognition that game roles demand the same emotional and technical skill as any screen performance.

Borrowed Engines

Beyond casting, the technological overlap between the industries has grown more literal. Serkis points out that Hollywood now routinely uses game engines — the real-time rendering systems poweri
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

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