Andy Serkis has described working with motion capture like wearing make-up.
The British actor turns in a excellent performance as chimpanzee Caesar this week in The Rise of the Planet of the Apes - a character that was developed using motion capture.
The actor is becoming a dab hand having created Gollum and King Kong for Peter Jackson in the same way. But Serkis admits that it is frustrating that not many people know what the process involves.
In an interview with Metro the actor said:"I approach live action roles the same as performance-capture roles but the technology allows you to play characters that would be impossible to pull off wearing layers of make-up.
"We had to make the apes [in Rise of the Planet of the Apes] totally believable. Every ape in this movie is played by an actor. It's just another way of capturing the performance. It's not a genre of acting, it's just a different type of camera."
"It's frustrating that the process isn't better understood. It's easy to understand John Hurt's role in The Elephant Man, for which he won an Oscar [nomination]. He had layers of incredible make-up but the underlying performance won him an Oscar [nomination].
"Performance-capture is the same as that but the make-up is applied as pixels painted on to the actor later down the line. Any actor should be able to play this kind of role, it's just a case of embracing the technology."
The Rise of the Planet of the Apes has been praised by the critics - Serkis' central performance and the creation of the apes in the film gaining major recognition. The movie currently tops the U.S. box office.
The Rise of the Planet of the Apes is out now.
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