Andy is Hollywood’s alpha-ape
By Darryl Smith
He’s at it again in Rise’s sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, with the story having moved on eight years and the human race all but wiped out by a Simian Flu virus.
Andy plays Caesar, the ape who had his intelligence enhanced by an anti-Alzheimer’s drug in the first film (which is set 2,000 years prior to events in Charlton Heston’s Planet of the Apes).
Having broken free from their human captors, Caesar and his fellow genetically- evolved apes are now living a peaceful existence away from the surviving humans.
Unfortunately for them, their homeland contains a dam which the humans need to help replenish their dwindling energy resources.
But the apes fear their search for power will only trigger a desire for it in another sense of the word and an uneasy stand-off ensues, with Caesar – who has a compassion for humans unusual in his species having been raised by them – stuck in the middle.
“He’s still developing his ‘innerape’,” smiles Andy, who has three children with his actress wife, Lorraine Ashbourne.
“He’s a natural leader. The other apes respect him because he has an innate sense of fairness. He values their opinions, and he includes them in the decision-making.
“He is responsible for the survival of a community but, on the other hand, he has empathy for humans, and still, deep down, feels a need to be able to communicate with them.”
The motion capture technology that Andy has made his own has followed a similar trajectory to the burgeoning colony of intelligent apes that appear in the film, with a growing number of actors looking to make use of it.
“I think it’s reaching a point where good actors who are interested in transformation, like Willem Defoe and John Malkovich, will do it,” Andy asserts.
“They see the liberation this tool can give them.
“Other actors might feel that it has to be their face on the screen, and that’s up to them.”
Three years ago Andy, the son of an Iraqi father and English mother, started his own studio, Imaginarium, and is currently working on a new version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm.
He was also brought in to use his expertise on the new Star Wars movie, although he’s strictly forbidden from saying how, and has directed a new version of The Jungle Book, starring Scarlett Johansson and Idris Elba.
“Before I became an actor, I studied visual arts, so I painted and did graphic design.
“I’ve always had a visual perspective of things so it made total sense to move into directing.”
And if you think this is a technological innovation that moviemakers will soon grow tired of utilising, Andy has news for you.
“I don’t think it’s going to go away, as an art form, or whatever it is. I think it’s going to be present in story telling for the next 10, 20, 30 years,” he says.