In my mind, Ive never drawn the distinction between playing a live-action role or a performance capture role.

One has to be clear: the acting part of the process is exactly the same.

Its just the way the characters are costumed and made up thats different.

There really is no difference.

Acting is acting, and hopefully the perception is changing.

I dont even consider that to be true, to be honest.

I consider myself an actor who uses a technology to act.

I dont even see it as a specialised form of acting.

Proper actors like Willem Defoe and John Malkovich totally get it because they can see the liberation in it.

Youre playing a chimpanzee with progressively more human characteristics, how did you approach that?

But it was tricky to get a handle on.

And then theres the physical change.

When does Caesar become bipedal?

Those were the things Rupert (Wyatt) and I had to work out in every single scene.

Why would I do that?

Ones a twenty-five-foot gorilla and ones a three-and-a-half-foot ring junkie!

Saying that, Caesars a hybrid.

Hes not a pure chimp.

Hes been living with humans and can speak via sign language, but he also has huge emotional intelligence.

Personally, I think thats the underlying theme of this film: empathy.

Does that mean you didnt do as much research for Caesar as compared to something likeKing Kong?

Thats right, because Kong was one hundred per cent gorilla.

Kong basically looks at Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) three times in that movie.

Its all about the disconnect and him being this lonely, psychotic hobo who cant connect with other people.

Thats not difficult for him.

Hes loved and nurtured, and grows up being able to communicate.

He has no language to communicate with his own species, but with humans hes fine.

Oliver was the touchstone character for us.

He had this extraordinary existence where people believed he was this missing link between man and ape.

Yeah, most definitely.

When you think about the arc of that role, its a huge ask, and a massive challenge.

Its all done with body language and eye contact.

Yeah, I think youre right.

How difficult was that to achieve?

Again, we had great actors playing the other roles.

Karin Konoval, a great actress, played Maurice the orangutan.

She was brilliant, and thoroughly researched orangutan behaviour to give that performance.

You had to have actors playing those roles.

The biggest advances have come from being able to play these parts on live-action sets.

The next big change will be getting rid of the head mounted cameras because they are quite invasive.

Thats the main progression.

I was in a very unique position, straddling two worlds.

Tintinis out at Christmas.

What was it like making that?

We had a great time on that with Peter and Steven [Spielberg] both bouncing off each other.

And what about Captain Haddock being Scottish in the movie?

And besides, Archibald Haddock sounds like a good, old-fashioned Scottish Presbyterian name to me!

Andy Serkis, thank you very much!