Originally when I went off to work on 'The Lord of The Rings' I got a call from my agent saying that I was just going to do a voice. But I couldn't really approach it like that. To get Gollum's voice I had to play the character.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
You have to do real acting, not just do a voice.
Trying to give an individual a voice has always kind of been my mission in my life. As an actor, I've always seen that was something that needed to be done. You need to find that voice inside of you so that you can stand up and be who you really are.
I always had a problem when I did the audio books myself because they weren't made to have me doing all the voices. And to hear established actors, and you think, 'Wow, that sounds like it's supposed to sound,' is great. They've got the right inflections, which is an enormous skill.
I don't want to play a voice.
I guess the biggest challenge to doing any kind of animation voice work is that you only have your voice to tell the story.
Voices have always been my way into a character. I usually approach the voice first.
Doing voices in animated movies has been one of my dreams. You get to go and act, and you don't have to put on makeup.
People will come up to me and try and be secretive and say, 'Can you do the Gollum voice for me?' And I'm like, 'Are you kidding? It's 8:30 in the morning on the Victoria Line.'
I had always wanted to lend my voice to a character. I did a voice for this video game, called 'Fallout 3,' and that was really fun.
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.