Christmas Carol actor: I couldn’t scream. I was gripped by fear
A Christmas Carol’s Andy Serkis also has a spooky tale that stood him in good stead for his latest role.
The Planet Of The Apes actor is part of the all-star line-up for the BBC’s three-part adaptation of the Charles Dickens’ classic.
He plays The Ghost of Christmas Past – and it reminded him of a ghost from his own past, during a stay in a youth hostel on Scotland’s west coast when he was 18.
“I was asleep in a dorm and my bed was next to the door,” Andy said. “I felt the room go extremely cold and saw the door handle turn and the door creep open. I was absolutely paralysed with fear.
“I couldn’t open my mouth – I was choking. Whatever it was, I don’t know. I wanted to scream out but couldn’t actually move.
“Then gradually it went back out the door. The door closed and the room began to warm up again.”
Andy stars alongside Guy Pearce as Ebenezer Scrooge, Charlotte Riley as The Ghost of Christmas Present and Line Of Duty star Stephen Graham as Jacob Marley. While Graham has never encountered a ghost, he believes there is something out there.
“I’ve felt the presence and energy of someone, or something,” he said.
“My auntie passed away not long ago, and I felt her presence at one particular time, when I was meditating actually.
“I personally feel that was her coming back to me to just say, ‘I’m all right, don’t worry about me.”
Neighbours and LA Confidential actor Guy Pearce says he is asked often if his father, who died when Guy was very young, has ever visited him as a ghost.
“And I don’t feel like he has but occasionally – and particularly now I have my own son – I feel like my father is present,” he explained.
“But obviously I’m projecting that myself and manufacturing that in my own head, I get that.
“But I do believe in the spirit world, and I very much believe the energy that inhabits all of us still exists when we die, and it just moves around and reappears in various other forms – whether that’s in a reincarnated version of oneself or whatever.
“I think you’re a pretty strong person to confidently be able to deny that stuff.”