who plays smeagol in return of the king
Andy Serkis Serkis first came to wide public notice for his performance as Sméagol / Gollum, in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001–2003), for which he provided motion capture movements and voice for the CGI character. His work on The Lord of the Rings started a debate on the legitimacy of CGI-assisted acting. Some critics[15] felt Serkis should have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, since his voice, body language, and facial expressions were used. There is the argument that his CGI actions were partially, or in some cases fully, animated without his movements, but the same is true for actors in a traditional film with CGI. Serkis appears briefly in live action as pre-Gollum Sméagol at the beginning of The Return of the King, and the CGI Gollum's facial characteristics are fundamentally based on Serkis' own.
Lee Pace On April 30, 2011, it was announced that Pace had been cast as the king of the Mirkwood Elves, Thranduil, in Peter Jackson's film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The announcement was made by Peter Jackson himself, who revealed on his Facebook page that Pace had been his favorite for the part, ever since he saw his performance in The Fall.[17] The character had previously been mentioned in Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and had previously been portrayed in The Hobbit, voiced by Oscar-nominated director Otto Preminger, and in the 1968 BBC radio series, voiced by the British actor Leonard Fenton. Pace made three trips to New Zealand, and called it a “fantastic experience”.[11] The character appeared in the prologue of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey released in December 2012, and had a larger role in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug released in December 2013 and in the last film of the series, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, released on December 17, 2014.