Andy Serkis will tell the story of his life and career in a memoir coming later this year.
Mariner will publish the actor and filmmaker’s My Pressures in the fall, the press announced in a news release. The title is a reference to one of Serkis’ most memorable lines—“My precious!”—which he delivered as Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films.
Serkis was raised in Middlesex, England, and Baghdad, and had appeared in plays and television series before his career exploded with his casting in Jackson’s films. He went on to star as the title character in Jackson’s King Kong; Captain Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin; and Ulysses Klaue in Joss Whedon’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther. He has also directed films including Venom: Let There Be Carnage and Animal Farm.
In his memoir, Mariner says, Serkis “invites us into a genre-defying conversation between actor and character, imagination and reality, and provides an answer to the question: what would Andy’s most iconic characters make of the man that brought them to life?”
Serkis announced the news of his memoir in an Instagram video. “For the past few years I’ve been working really hard on creating something special,” he says. “I wanted to share my story with you.”
He then turns to another camera, and says, in his Gollum voice, “Nobody’s interested in your story!”
“Sorry about that,” Serkis says in his normal voice. “I wanted to share my story with you and give you a behind-the-scenes look at the fantastical worlds I’ve had the privilege to be part of, from Lord of the Rings to Star Wars to Planet of the Apes.”
My Pressures is slated for publication on Nov. 3.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
