Justin Lewis - Andy Serkis--The Man Behind the Mask

L ong regarded as reliable, resourceful and adventurous, Andy Serkis has always been interested in the power of stage and screen acting as a transformative experience, seeing how drama can transcend entertainment and actually change peoples lives. He has often spoken about acting being a service to the community and a responsibility, which may explain why stardom has albeit belatedly found him. As we will see, at no point in his career has he consciously pursued celebrity. Working for others is something my parents instilled in us, Andy said in 2010. There was a strong sense of the importance of helping other people. And Clement and Lylie Serkiss separate but tireless career paths had set a clear example of service and responsibility to their three daughters and two younger sons.

English-born Lylie taught children with special needs, but continued to raise all five of her offspring almost single-handedly. Clement, whose surname had been shortened from Serkissian, was of Armenian descent and worked as a doctor in Iraq throughout the time that Andy and his siblings were growing up. Clement had already qualified as a gynaecologist when he first met his future wife; she was recovering in Baghdad after contracting tuberculosis back in England. Following the couples marriage, Clement continued to live and work in Iraq, while Lylie and their children would relocate to Ruislip Manor in Middlesex, 13 miles northwest of central London.

Clement and Lylies fourth child, Andrew, was born on 20 April 1964. In that same year, Clement was one of four medics who co-founded a private hospital in Baghdad called Ibn Sina. The founders had expressed grave concern that the city, despite its size and population, had no hospital with sufficiently modern equipment and facilities. Although it had been founded for the benefit of the ruling class, Clement and his three co-founders fervently believed that Ibn Sina should provide free treatment for anyone in need, regardless of their race, religion or social status.

Until the mid-1970s, the Serkis children would see their father only during school holidays. They would travel to the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, where they would be reunited with him and other relatives. Clements absence from home life in Ruislip could make Andy a tense youngster.

The boys unruly nature would mellow with maturity, but would be accompanied by a resigned sense of sadness about his absentee father. I always mourn the fact I never got to know my father, or spent time with him, he told TheTimes in 2009, as Clement was entering his 90th year. To relate to him now was unfathomable. Its like, Where do you begin? So much has gone on. So much. Yet this regret was tempered by an admiration for his fathers belief in justice, supporting those people who needed it. Times werent easy for him in Baghdad, Andy told the Guardian, but he carried on going there because he believed in what he was doing.

The childhood trips to the Middle East were certainly enlightening, and would help to give Andy and his siblings a sense of acceptance and flexibility about different countries and cultures that were very different from west London. These journeys, coupled with being brought up by his mother alone, also made Andy start to relate to the idea of being an outsider in society, something that he would explore a great deal in many of his stage and screen roles, from Gollum to Ian Brady. We were outsiders, he said, and Ive always sympathised with those who feel excluded, probably as a result of this.

From the age of 11, Andy attended St Benedicts, a Roman Catholic school in the west London district of Ealing. The schools other former pupils have included the biographer and critic Peter Ackroyd, the former Conservative MP and Hong Kong governor Chris (later Lord) Patten, who was appointed chairman of the BBC Trust in 2011, and the comedian Julian Clary. Clary was already entering St Benedicts sixth form when Serkis enrolled at the school in the autumn of 1975. Although it was strictly a boys-only school at that point, some girls were admitted to its sixth form by the end of the 1970s. Serkis remembers lots of gangs and lots of fights, but was not on the receiving end of bullying. He did, however, gain a nickname: perhaps inevitably, Billy Smarts, after the famous Billy Smarts Circus, whose spectacular shows were a mainstay of festive television at the time.