Star Wars: What Supreme Leader Snoke Looks Like In Real Life

Before Emperor Palpatine's (Ian McDiarmid) unexpected and poorly-executed return to the forefront of the Star Wars galaxy, it appeared another villain would be the sequel trilogy's big bad. In "Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens," Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, who brought multiple props home from the Star Wars set) immediately takes center stage as the Skywalker saga's next Darth Vader-like figure. In keeping with this archetype, it's revealed during the feature's events that he's operating under a dark side master of his own, the shadowy Supreme Leader Snoke, as portrayed by Andy Serkis.

During Snoke's appearances, Serkis portrays the overconfident, cunning Force-user through his voice and motion capture technology. The character is defined by his deformed, scarred appearance, which "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker" reveals is partially due to him being a strandcast creation of Palpatine himself. Unsurprisingly, Serkis doesn't resemble his test tube-created Star Wars villain role in the slightest.

If you weren't familiar with Serkis and what he looks like, that's understandable. He has built a career off of appearing in big screen blockbusters without showing his face. 

Andy Serkis is a highly successful actor whose body of work dates back decades. In that time, he has taken on numerous in-person roles, from Lumpy in Peter Jackson's "King Kong" remake to Alfred Pennyworth in "The Batman." His likeness has even appeared in the galaxy far, far away, with him portraying Kino Loy on "Andor," the series the entire Star Wars franchise should learn some lessons from. At the same time, for as great of a traditional live-action actor Serkis is, his legacy on the big screen will forever be tied to his motion-capture work and the astounding performances he's pulled off within its limits.

Long before signing the dotted line to play Supreme Leader Snoke, Serkis turned heads in the early 2000s as a mo-cap star thanks to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He turned in exceptional work as Sméagol, better known as the creature Gollum, that remains acclaimed all these years later. This led him to play Kong in the aforementioned "King Kong," Captain Haddock in "The Adventures of Tintin" (one of many underrated adventure movies you need to watch), Caesar in the rebooted Planet of the Apes saga, and Baloo in "Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle," to name a few. He even got the chance to return to Gollum thanks to the Hobbit trilogy in the mid-2010s.

To call Andy Serkis versatile, talented, and truly one of a kind would be a string of tremendous understatements. The folks at Lucasfilm couldn't have picked a stronger actor to bring Supreme Leader Snoke, as controversial a character as he is, to life.