Andy Serkis admits Gollum is still keeping him up at night: “Am I directing you, or you me?”

If you thought Andy Serkis had finally put Gollum behind him, think again. The man who more or less invented performance capture superstardom is at it once more, but this time he is not just embodying the world’s most knackered former hobbit — he is also directing. The new film, The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, has just wrapped production, and Serkis, now 62, has found the experience even more all-consuming than usual.

Filming wrapped on The Hunt for Gollum, set to debut in December 2027.

The bloke’s relationship with the slimy ring-junkie goes back more than two decades, and it is safe to say it is not all sunshine and lembas bread. Asked by USA Today what it feels like stepping back into the character after so long, Serkis put it simply — 'I do love and hate him.'

He started all this back in 2001, which means Gollum has been sticking around for 26 years now. And not in a gentle, off-in-the-background sort of way either. According to Serkis, coming back to direct The Hunt for Gollum while also starring as Gollum himself has played havoc with his sleep. Speaking to The Times, he admitted there is a sort of running dispute in his own head: is he controlling the character, or is the character controlling him? It gets so tangled that he sometimes lies awake wondering, 'Am I directing you, Gollum? Or you me? Are we arguing?' With a laugh, he summed up the sensation as 'insane' and confessed, 'My mind is… busy.'

Gollum at the Table

The odd relationship Serkis has with his characters extends past the film set. His new book, My Pressures, is not your usual sob-story memoir. Instead, he’s written an imaginary roundtable, chatting with a few versions of himself — Gollum, Caesar from Planet of the Apes, and Ulysses Klaue from the Marvel films, to name a few. In this bizarre literary panel, Gollum apparently spends most of his time taking the mickey out of Andy before trying to strangle him. Standard.

When pushed by USA Today about how actors deal with such role-hopping, Serkis described the process as far from straightforward. Characters like Gollum do not just wash off when you wrap filming. According to Serkis, taking on such intense performances can genuinely change a person — sometimes the line between the part and the real self gets a bit blurry. He compared it to getting 'chemically changed', like your mind and body have had to adapt themselves to someone else’s personality, and it leaves you with some weird residue to shake off at the end.