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Gollum is my picture of Dorian Gray. He will be with me for the rest of life, and I will grow to look more like him as I get older.

I think that Gollum is really the character who is a very human character, and he's very flawed, like most humans are, and has good and bad sides.

Gollum's never really gone too far away from me because he's indelibly kind of printed into my DNA now, I think.

It has been great portraying Gollum, but it will be great to see my face on screen for a change.

If 'The Hobbit' happens - and there's reason to believe that it will - then I think I'm in with a chance! Gollum is very much part of 'The Hobbit,' after all.

Originally, I thought, 'Gollum's such a fantastic character, why are you doing him CG? Surely you need to be able to humanise him as much as possible - he's so full of pathos and real emotion.'

I think that when Tolkien created Gollum and the ring, he even expressed in his biography that he never really knew what he created until he went back and looked at it.

People find it hard to get their heads around nominating a computer-generated character, but every time you see Gollum on the screen, that's me who is acting up there - even if it is behind a mass of pixels - and it's my voice you hear.

Gollum is entirely based on the notion of addiction. The way that the ring pervades him, makes him craving, lustful, depletes him physically, psychologically and mentally.

Not a day goes by where I'm not reminded of Gollum by some person in the street who asks me to do his voice or wants to talk to me about him. But because 'The Hobbit' has been talked about as a project for many years, I knew that at some point I'd have to reengage with him.