Andy Serkis is Ian Dury

As a young man, Serkis adored Dury – he was so witty, original and had overcome so much. Then he met him. "He was obnoxious. We were in a Chinese restaurant and he slagged eveybody off and was just an arse, you know. And that same night, Mickey Gallagher, who was one of [Dury's band] the Blockheads but was caring for him, just went, 'Fuck this, I'm not doing it any more', and he left Ian on the pavement outside the hotel."
But that's what Serkis loved about Dury – he was anything but a sanitised victim, and the film would never suggest he was. "I knew we weren't going to be painting a glorified picture of a stoic underdog, it was going to be warts and all. And when we started showing early drafts to Sophie and Baxter [Dury's second wife and oldest son], they were like, 'He's so much darker, so much more of a cunt than this. You've got to get down and dirty with this.' So we thought, great, if they're prepared to take off the boxing gloves, so will we."
Whenever he takes on a character, he looks for what they have in common, and Serkis, 45, says the two men share a near obsessive drive to fulfil themselves creatively. "Ian knows there's only a certain amount of time we have on this planet, and if you've got a family, there are going to be casualties. There isn't a moral to the story, but it's like, be magnificent in the short amount of time you've got. And I think I live my life by that code, but we also have real life to deal with. Where the Venn diagram crosses over between me and Ian is wanting to do the very best you can in the short space of time you've got, but give everything you can equally to the people you love and who are your life. That's a really difficult thing."
It seems to be a conflict very much at the heart of Serkis's life. He and Lorraine have three children; he loves chasing them round the house, playing monsters, and is desperately aware that he is not there for them as often as he would like to be. (He spent nearly two years in New Zealand shooting Lord Of The Rings, and is soon off again to shoot The Hobbit.) And sometimes, he says, even when he is there, he isn't really because he's lost in a character. "You're watching your kids playing football and you're not present. It's like the worst… it's horrible. I despise myself for it." He says it with a quiet, shocking intensity, stands up and gets the next round in. "I think it's a particularly male thing. Being present and in the moment with your kids is something a lot of men struggle with."
We're talking politics and compromise. He's no longer in the SWP, but still thinks of himself as being on the left. At the 2003 Oscars, he brought along for company a "No War For Oil" banner. He and Lorraine recently argued about education – he believes in state education, she favours private. Lorraine won.
As he worried that his mind was not open enough in his SWP days, he now worries that his mind is too open. He tells me how he tried to get into the head of Moors murderer Ian Brady. "When I played him, I thought, what's the most beautiful thing that's happened in my life? Well, it was witnessing my three children being born at home in a birthing pool in my living room, and I thought, well, for Ian Brady, the most beautiful thing must have been taking life away from a child."
A chill runs through my veins. That's horrible, I say. Serkis nods. "I know, it's a really scary thought, but if you take the role on, you have to go down that route."
Does he find at times he's unsure what he actually believes because he's borrowing a character's moral code? He smiles. "I do listen to myself sometimes and think, is my moral compass so easily swayed by the characters I play, or is it me growing as a human being?"
He loves acting, he says, and does not intend to give it up, but he is turning more towards directing. He made a great little short film called Snake about a prostitute (played by his wife), tattoos, a mysterious bag of money and an unwanted kidney transplant. Filmed in black and white, it is creepy and cool and disturbingly funny.
Why is he focusing more on directing? Well, he says, it goes back to what we've been talking about. He would like to approach things more objectively, from a distance. He talks about the times he worked with Mike Leigh and couldn't tell his family what he was doing because those were the rules, and found himself leading a secret double life. And if you're attracted to difficult, often unpleasant characters, of course it's going to mess with your head. "The whole chameleon thing about acting. That's why I'm moving towards directing – it's a much more healthy occupation."

The Guardian - Film website