Mass Effect Series Cast and Crew

English film actor, director and author Andy Serkis is known for his performance capture roles comprising motion capture acting, animation and voice work for such computer-generated characters as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (2001-2003) and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), the eponymous King Kong in the 2005 film, Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Captain Haddock / Sir Francis Haddock in Steven Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015). Serkis earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of serial killer Ian Brady in the British television film Longford (2006), and was nominated for a BAFTA Award for his portrayal of new wave and punk rock musician Ian Dury in the biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010). In 2015, he had a small role in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Serkis has his own motion capture workshop, The Imaginarium Studios in London, which he will use for his directorial debut, Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018).

Andrew Clement G. Serkis was born April 20, 1964, in Ruislip Manor, West London, England. He has three sisters and a brother. His father, Clement Serkis, an ethnic Armenian whose original family surname was Serkissian, was a medical doctor working abroad, in Iraq; the Serkis family spent time around the Middle East, and for the first ten years of his life, Andy traveled between Baghdad and London. His mother, Lylie (Weech), who is British-born, was busy working as a special education teacher of handicapped children, so Andy and his four siblings were raised with au pairs in the house. Young Serkis wanted to be an artist; he was fond of painting and drawing, and visualized himself working behind the scenes. He attended St. Benedict's School, a Roman Catholic School for boys at the Benedictine Abbey in London. Serkis studied visual arts at Lancaster University in the north-west of England. There, he became involved in mechanical aspects of the theatre and did stage design and set building for theatrical productions. Then, Serkis was asked to play a role in a student production, and made his stage debut in Barrie Keeffe's play, "Gotcha"; thereafter, he switched from stage design to acting, which was a real calling that transformed his life.

Instead of going to an acting college, Serkis, in 1985, began his professional acting career at the Duke's Playhouse in Lancaster, where he was given an Equity card and performed in fourteen plays, one after another, as an apprentice of Jonathan Petherbridge. After that, he worked in touring theatre companies, doing it for no money, fueled by a sense of enthusiasm, moving to a new town every week. He has thus appeared in a host of popular plays and on almost every renowned British stage. In 1989, he appeared in a stage production of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth", so beginning his long association with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, where he would return many times, to appear in "She Stoops to Conquer", "Your Home in the West" and the "True Nature of Love", among other plays. In the 1990s, Serkis began to make his mark on the London stage, appearing at the Royal Court Theatre as "The Fool" in "King Lear", making his interpretation of "The Fool" as the woman that "Lear", a widower, could relate to - a man, in drag, as a Victorian musician. He also appeared as "Potts" in the hit play, "Mojo", playing in front of full houses and earning huge critical success. In 1987, Serkis made his debut on television, and he acted in several major British TV miniseries throughout the 1990s.

In 1999, Andy Serkis landed the prize role of "Gollum" in Peter Jackson's epic film trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's saga, "The Lord of the Rings". He spent four years in the part and received awards and nominations for his performance as "Gollum", a computer-generated character in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), which won 11 Oscars. "Gollum" was the collaborative team's effort around Serkis's work in performance capture - an art form based on CGI-assisted acting. Serkis's work was an interactive performance in a skin-tight CGI suit with markers allowing cameras to track and register 3D position for each marker. Serkis' every nuance was picked up by several cameras positioned at precisely calculated angles to allow for the software to see enough information to process the image. The images of Serkis' performances were translated into the digital format by animators at Weta Digital studio in New Zealand. There, his image was key-frame animated and then edited into the movie, Serkis did have one scene in "The Return of the King" showing how he originally had the ring, killing another hobbit to posses it after they found it during a fishing trip. He drew from his three cats clearing fur balls out of their throats to develop the constricted voice he produced for "Gollum" and "Sméagol", and it was also enhanced by sound editing in post-production.

Serkis spent almost two years in New Zealand and away from his family, and much of 2002 and 2003 in post-production studios for large periods of time, due to complexity of the creative process of bringing the character of "Gollum" to the screen. Serkis had to shoot two versions for every scene; one version was with him on camera, acting with (chiefly) Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, which served both to show Wood and Astin the moves so that they could precisely interact with the movements of "Gollum", and to provide the CGI artists the subtleties of Gollum's physical movements and facial expressions for their manual finishing of the animated images. In the other version, he'd go the voice off-camera, as Wood and Astin repeated their movements as though "Gollum" were there with them; that take would be the basis for inserting the CGI Gollum used in the released movie. In post-production, Serkis was doing motion-capture wearing a skintight motion capture suit with CGI gear while acting as a virtual puppeteer redoing every single scene in the studio. Additional CGI rotomation was done by animators using the human eye instead of the computer to capture the subtleties of Serkis' performance. Serkis also used this art form in his performance as "Kong" in King Kong (2005), which won him a Toronto Film Critics Association Award (2005) for his unprecedented work helping to realize the main character in "King Kong", and a Visual Effects Society Award (2006) for Outstanding Animated Character in a Live Action Motion Picture.

Apart from his line of CGI-driven characters, Serkis continued with traditional acting in several leading and supporting roles, such as his appearances as "Richard Kneeland" opposite Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 (2004), and "Alley" opposite David Bowie in The Prestige (2006), among other film performances. On television, he starred as 'Vincent Van Gogh' in the sixth episode of Simon Schama's Power of Art (2006), the BBC2 series about artists. Serkis is billed as "Capricorn" in the upcoming adventure film, Inkheart (2008). At the same time, he continued the development of performance capture while expanding his career into computer games. He starred as "King Bothan" in the martial arts drama, Heavenly Sword (2007), a Playstation 3 title, for which he provided a basis for his in-game face and also acts as a dramatic director on the project.

Andy Serkis married actress and singer Lorraine Ashbourne, and the couple have three children: daughter Ruby Serkis (born in 1998), and two sons Sonny Serkis (born in 2000) and Louis Ashbourne Serkis (born on 19 June 2004), who is now also a movie star. Away from acting, Andy Serkis is an accomplished amateur painter. Since his school years at Lancaster, being so close to the Lake District, Serkis developed his other passion in life: mountaineering. He is a pescetarian. Serkis has been active in charitable causes, such as The Hope Foundation, which provides essential life-saving medical aid for children suffering from Leukemia and children from countries devastated by war. In October 2006, he was a presenter at the first annual British Academy Video Games Awards at the Roundhouse, London. Andy Serkis lives with his family in North London, England.

Sergio Mimica-Gezzan was born in 1957 in Zagreb, Croatia, Yugoslavia. He is a director and assistant director, known for Saving Private Ryan (1998), Schindler's List (1993) and Minority Report (2002).

Haifaa Al Mansour is the first female filmmaker in Saudi Arabia and is regarded as one of the most significant cinematic figures in the Kingdom. She finished her bachelor's degree in Literature at the American University in Cairo and completed a Master's degree in Directing and Film Studies from the University of Sydney. The success of her three short films, as well as the international acclaim of her award-winning 2005 documentary Women Without Shadows, influenced a whole new wave of Saudi filmmakers and made the issue of opening cinemas in the Kingdom a front-page discussion. Within the Kingdom her work is both praised and vilified for encouraging discussion on topics generally considered too taboo, like tolerance, the dangers of orthodoxy, and the need for Saudis to take a critical look at their traditional and restrictive culture.

Known for his bold career growth, Australian director Justin Kurzel, who, after the striking debut feature The Snowtown Murders (2011), which conquered hearts of people on many festivals, has chosen a Shakespearean adaptation (Macbeth (2015)) starring famous international film actors Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in the main roles as his second film, then was taking even more bold choice to take on blockbuster project, a screen adaptation of Assassin's Creed (2016) videogame, as only third of his features.

Kurzel was born on August 3, 1974 in the South Australian Gawler. His brother is the musician and composer Jed Kurzel, who is often working with him on various projects. Both grew up in Gawler.

Kurzel began studying at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney at the early 1990s.

At first he was making a music videos for the rock band The Messhall, founded by his brother. In 2005 future filmmaker made his first short film Blue Tongue (2005). Then, after six years, he released The Snowtown Murders (2011), a film about the mass murderer case starring Daniel Henshall which was praised and acclaimed both by the critics and by the audience for the striking experience of which is a truly cold and terrifying film it gives to the viewer. Kurzel had also written the script for the film, for which he was awarded the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award as Best Director in 2011, Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival, won Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Best Directing and was nominated for Australian Directors Guild Award, British Film Institute Awards,

Then he wrote and direct one segment of The Turning (2013), the Boner McPharlin's Moll, for which, alongside all the other directors attached to the making, he was nominated for Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award for Best Directing.

In 2015, a turning point for Kurzel's career, he directed a successful adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth (2015), in which Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard took the main parts. The film was screened at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2015, when it received a Special Mention in FIPRESCI Prize, Special Mention on Critics Wee, and compete for the Palme d'Or, Golden Camera, Queer Palm and Critics Week Grand Prize. The film was very well received amongst the viewers and critics, was nominated for variety of awards across the globe and was presented with a special premiere showing at Edinburgh, Scotland, where all the main filming took place. For directing this film he was nominated for British Independent Film Awards as the Best Director.

During the shooting, the strong working relationship between Kurzel and actors Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard has been established, which resulted in announcing on December 2016 that he will helm the film adaptation of the popular computer game Assassin's Creed (2016) starring both of the actors alongside Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson, Charlotte Rampling and Kurzel's wife Essie Davis. Making of such a high-profile studio picture established Kurzel in the world of high-budget filmmaking, giving him many doors open for his future possible projects.

Kurzel currently resides in London, UK with his wife, actress Essie Davis, and their children.

Cedric Nicolas-Troyan was born on 9 March 1969 in Talence, Gironde, France. He is a director and producer, known for Kate (2021), The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016) and Snow White and the Huntsman (2012). He has been married to Sue Troyan since 25 July 2002. They have one child.

Julian Holmes is known for The Boys (2019), Daredevil (2015) and Carnival Row (2019).

Nick Rowland is known for She Rides Shotgun, Calm with Horses (2019) and Floodlights (2022).

Stephen Vitale is known for Agent of Sleep (2017), Sword of the Dead (2018) and Apex.

Described by film producer Michael Deeley as "the very best eye in the business", director Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937 in South Shields, Tyne and Wear. His father was an officer in the Royal Engineers and the family followed him as his career posted him throughout the United Kingdom and Europe before they eventually returned to Teesside. Scott wanted to join the British Army (his elder brother Frank had already joined the Merchant Navy) but his father encouraged him to develop his artistic talents instead and so he went to West Hartlepool College of Art and then London's Royal College of Art where he helped found the film department.

In 1962, he joined the BBC as a trainee set designer working on several high profile series. He attended a trainee director's course while he was there and his first directing job was on an episode of the popular BBC police series Z Cars (1962), Error of Judgement (1965). More TV work followed until, frustrated by the poor financial rewards at the BBC, he went into advertising. With his younger brother, Tony Scott, he formed the advertising production company RSA (Ridley Scott Associates) in 1967 and spent the next 10 years making some of the best known and best loved TV adverts ever shown on British television, including a series of ads for Hovis bread set to the music of Dvorak's New World Symphony which are still talked about today ("'e were a great baker were our dad.")

He began working with producer David Puttnam in the 1970s developing ideas for feature films. Their first joint endeavor, The Duellists (1977) won the Jury Prize for Best First Work at Cannes in 1977 and was nominated for the Palm d'Or, more than successfully launching Scott's feature film career. The success of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) inspired Scott's interest in making science fiction and he accepted the offer to direct Dan O'Bannon's low budget science fiction horror movie Alien (1979), a critical and commercial success that firmly established his worldwide reputation as a movie director.

Blade Runner (1982) followed in 1982 to, at best, a lukewarm reception from public and critics but in the years that followed, its reputation grew - and Scott's with it - as one of the most important sci-fi movies ever made. Scott's next major project was back in the advertising world where he created another of the most talked-about advertising spots in broadcast history when his "1984"-inspired ad for the new Apple Macintosh computer was aired during the Super Bowl on January 22, 1984. Scott's movie career has seen a few flops (notably Legend (1985) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)), but with successes like Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000) and Black Hawk Down (2001) to offset them, his reputation remains solidly intact.

Ridley Scott was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire at the 2003 Queen's New Year Honours for his "substantial contribution to the British film industry". On July 3, 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship in 2018. BAFTA described him as "a visionary director, one of the great British film-makers whose work has made an indelible mark on the history of cinema. Forty years since his directorial debut, his films continue to cross the boundaries of style and genre, engaging audiences and inspiring the next generation of film talent."

Mark Huffam is known for The Martian (2015), Saving Private Ryan (1998) and The Northman (2022).

David W. Zucker is President of Television for Scott Free, and Executive Producer of the series adaptation of Philip K. Dick's classic "The Man in the High Castle" for Amazon, "The Good Fight," the widely acclaimed CBS All-Access spin-off of "The Good Wife," the forthcoming AMC psychological thriller "The Terror," the Amazon half-hour action-comedy starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as "Jean-Claude Van Johnson," the CBS All-Access drama, "Strange Angel," exploring the intersection of rocketry and the occult (directed by David Lowery), and "The Passage," based on Justin Cronin's NY Times best-selling fantasy book trilogy for Fox.

During his tenure, Scott Free has produced a steady stream of highly acclaimed programs including the Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated, Peabody-winning drama, "The Good Wife" (seven seasons), crime drama "Numb3rs" (six seasons) and the summer satire "BrainDead" on CBS, plus the esteemed Civil War medical drama "Mercy Street" on PBS. Notable long form programs include the National Geographic channel series of "Killing" telefilms (which include "Reagan," "Jesus," and "Kennedy," the latter both Emmy-nominated, plus the docudrama "Killing Lincoln"), "Klondike" for Discovery, the Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated "The Pillars of the Earth" for Starz, "World Without End" for Reelz, Emmy-nominated "Into the Storm" for HBO, Emmy-nominated "The Andromeda Strain" and "Coma" for A&E, the Golden Globe-nominated "The Company" at TNT, and a feature-length digital series for X-Box/Microsoft, "Halo: Nightfall." Acclaimed non-fiction programs include "Crimes of the Centry" and the Emmy-winning documentary special "Gettysburg" for History Channel. Previously, Zucker worked as a Story Editor on the CBS series, Judging Amy, wrote pilot scripts for CBS and ABC, as well as various stage plays, and served as VP of Drama Series for CBS in addition to VP of Drama Series & Current Programs at Warner Bros. TV.

Francesca Gardiner is known for Succession (2018), Killing Eve (2018) and His Dark Materials (2019).

Heather Quinn is known for Werewolf by Night (2022), Hawkeye (2021) and Moxie.

Amanda Overton is known for Severance (2022), Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023) and Arcane (2021).

Lauren Bello is known for The Sandman (2022), The Forest (2016) and Foundation (2021).

Dan Nowak is known for The Expanse (2015), The Killing (2011) and Get Shorty (2017).

Harry Gregson-Williams is one of Hollywood's most sought-after and prolific composers whose long list of film and television credits underscore the diverse range of his talents. He has received the BMI Icon Award in recognition of his unique and indelible influence on generations of music makers and was awarded the prestigious Ambassador Award by the Society of Composers & Lyricists. Born in England to a musical family, Gregson-Williams earned a choral scholarship to St. John's College, Cambridge, at the age of 7 and later gained a coveted spot at London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama, from which he recently received an honorary fellowship. He started his film career as assistant to composer Richard Harvey and later as orchestrator and arranger for Stanley Myers,and went on to compose his first scores for director Nicolas Roeg. His subsequent collaboration and friendship with composer Hans Zimmer led to Gregson-Williams providing music for such films as "The Rock," "Armageddon" and "The Prince of Egypt" and helped launch his career in Hollywood.

Harry recently completed Gladiator II directed by Ridley Scott which stars Paul Mescal and Pedro Pascal and is scheduled for release in November 2024. Cinematic releases for 2023 included "Meg 2: The Trench" starring Jason Statham and directed by Ben Wheatley, the thriller "Retribution" starring Liam Neeson directed by Nimród Antal, and Aardman's animated feature "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget" directed by Sam Fell. Other recent film scores include "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci" both directed by Ridley Scott as well as Disney's live action feature film "Mulan" directed by Niki Caro, with whom he had worked previously when scoring her Holocaust drama "The Zookeeper's Wife." Gregson-Williams and his brother Rupert Gregson-Williams teamed up to write the score for the HBO drama series "The Gilded Age" which is heading into season 3. He also collaborated with his friend, composer Mychael Danna, for the documentary "Return to Space" directed by Oscar-winning directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin receiving Emmy nominations for their work.

Gregson-Williams was the composer on all four installments of the animated blockbuster "Shrek" franchise, garnering a BAFTA Award nomination for the score for the Oscar-winning "Shrek." He received Golden Globe and Grammy Award nominations for his score for Andrew Adamson's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." He has collaborated multiple times with a number of directors, including Ben Affleck on "Live by Night," "The Town" and "Gone Baby Gone"; Joel Schumacher on "Twelve," "The Number 23," "Veronica Guerin" and "Phone Booth"; Tony Scott on "Unstoppable," "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," "Déjà Vu," "Domino," "Man on Fire," "Spy Game" and "Enemy of the State"; Ridley Scott on original scores for the upcoming "Gladiator II," "The Martian," "Kingdom of Heaven," "The Last Duel" and "House of Gucci" and themes for Prometheus," "Exodus: Gods and Kings," Bille August on "Return to Sender" and "Smilla's Sense of Snow"; Andrew Adamson on the "Shrek" series, the first two "Narnia" movies and "Mr. Pip"; as well as with Antoine Fuqua on "The Replacement Killers," "The Equalizer," The Equalizer 2" and "Infinite." Some of his other recent film projects include Disney Nature's feature film "Polar Bear", and "The Ambush" directed by Pierre Morel, "Life in a Day 2020" directed Kevin Macdonald, "The Meg" directed by Jon Turteltaub, Aardman's "Early Man" directed by Nick Park for which he received an Annie Award nomination and Disney Nature's "Penguins." His television credits include "Whiskey Cavalier," the miniseries "Catch-22" for George Clooney and two episodes of the anthology series "Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams" for which he received an Emmy nomination for the episode titled "The Commuter."

Gregson-Williams has scored three of the five games in the highly successful "Metal Gear Solid" franchise for Konami and scored "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" for Activision, which became the top-selling video game of 2014 and earned him various music gaming awards. Throughout his career, Gregson-Williams has collaborated with a diverse array of recording artists such as Regina Spektor, Imogen Heap, Tricky, Peter Murphy, Flea, Hybrid, Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, Trevor Horn, Trevor Rabin, Lebo M., Perry Farrell and Tony Visconti and most recently Gregson-Williams co-wrote the original song "Loyal Brave True" for "Mulan" performed by Christina Aguilera.

Rupert Gregson-Williams was born on 21 February 1967 in Tonbridge, Kent, England, UK. He is a composer and actor, known for Wonder Woman (2017), Hacksaw Ridge (2016) and The Crown (2016). He has been married to Emma Jacobs since 1996. They have one child.

Adam Arkapaw is known for his work on films such as Macbeth (2015 - ASC spotlight award) Animal Kingdom (2010 - Camerimage Cinematographer Debuts Competition winner) The Snowtown Murders (2011) Light Between the Oceans (2016) Lore (2011) and Assassin's Creed (2016). He is also the Emmy Award-winning cinematographer of Top of the Lake (2013) and True Detective Season 1 (2014). Born in Bowral, a small town south of Sydney, Australia. Arkapaw studied at Melbourne's Victorian College of the Arts, getting his start making shorts and commercials.

Ed Moore BSC is a British cinematographer represented by WPA. He was born in Cornwall and began his career in theatrical lighting before moving into film lighting and eventually work as a DP. Along with two features, he's worked extensively in high end TV drama including Doctor Who, This Way Up, Dark Heart (2018), Shetland (2017) and Vera (2017).

David Higgs is known for RocknRolla (2008), Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) and His Dark Materials (2019).

Owen McPolin is from Co. Kerry, Ireland and a member of the Irish Society of Cinematographers. He began his career shooting drama for BBC, ITV and Channel 4 and more recently known for his work on, "Foundation", "Shadow & Bone", "Penny Dreadful" and "Deadly Class". Recognised for his work with three IFTA Nominations, HUGO Award, Royal Television Society Nomination, BAFTA Nomination, and BAFTA Cymru Award.

Kira Kelly is known for Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), Echo (2023) and Insecure (2016).

Kolja Brandt is known for North Face (2008), Erased (2012) and Hector and the Search for Happiness (2014).

Mark Sanger was born on 13 January 1974 in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He is an editor, known for Jurassic World Dominion (2022), Gravity (2013) and Joe Bell (2020). He has been married to Becky since 1 December 2002. They have one child.