9 Actors Who Helped Movies In Ways You Won't Believe

9. Andy Serkis Was The Second-Unit Director - The Hobbit Trilogy

Andy Serkis is one the most versatile actors working today, having made a name for himself as Hollywood's go-to performance capture artist playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings movies and Caesar in the Planet of the Apes franchise.

But Serkis has worn many hats over the years, from working as a performance capture consultant on the likes of Godzilla 2014 and Avengers: Age of Ultron to, most impressively, being Peter Jackson's second-unit director on his Hobbit trilogy.

In addition to reprising his role of Gollum, Serkis spent 200 days shooting battle sequences and aerial photography while Jackson worked with the main cast, and if nothing else his direction felt completely consistent with Jackson's prevailing style.

The outing evidently gave Serkis the confidence to helm his own feature outright, as in 2017 he made his directorial debut with the broadly praised Robin Cavendish biopic Breathe.