Thanks to roles like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes films and various iterations of the Star Wars franchise, Serkis has done a lot of standing in front of green screens and looking up at things that aren’t there. But today, rather than a movie set, the couple are at a television studio in Hammersmith, west London.

They are the models for the final of Sky Art’s long-running painting competition Portrait Artist of the Year, and now they can finally put down the ice axes and coil of ropes and allow their muscles to relax. “I’m used to awkward physical positions,” says Serkis who, you might recall, was eaten by giant multi-fanged leeches in Peter Jackson’s King Kong and had a “vibranium” cannon strapped to his arm in Black Panther.
“I find it can often be a requirement of the role.”

Things are not so relaxed for the three artists, who must wait for the decision of the judges, Tai Shan Schierenberg, Kathleen Soriano and Imogen Gibbon. “I’ve been dying to go and have a peek,” says Ashbourne. “You’re looking at other people’s expressions watching the painting, and you can hear snippets of what they’re saying. Stephen Mangan told one artist, ‘Oh, you’re doing a lot of smooshing,’ and I’m thinking, ‘What’s the deal? What’s being smooshed?’”

Now in its 11th series, the show aims to find the best portrait artists in the country. To get this far, finalists have come through a heat and a semi-final, along the way painting a host of well-known faces, including this year: Lucy Worsley, Richard Madeley, Rosie Jones, Baaba Maal and Martha Kearney. For this climactic challenge they didn’t, perhaps, expect to have models dressed as Victorian mountaineers.

Ashbourne is in hobble skirt and boots and Serkis, a keen climber since going on Alpine expeditions as a teenager, is in sturdy cords and 19th-century Alpinist jacket. Invited by Sky Arts to pick a visual theme for the portrait, he jumped at the chance to reproduce one of his favourite periods in climbing history, when the Alps were first conquered, often by British climbers. “In 30 years,” he says, “from the 1850s to the 1880s, pretty much every single mountain was being mapped and climbed.”

We courted in the mountains… ice-climbing in the Alps

The Alpine theme is also a chance to celebrate the couple’s joint love of climbing and a long-lasting relationship that has accommodated both his rise to worldwide fame and Ashbourne’s much-admired stage and television career: she’s most recently been seen in Sherwood and Alma’s Not Normal.

Serkis, 60, born in London, and Ashbourne, 63, born in Manchester, met in 1989 when they were both appearing in She Stoops to Conquer at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. They married in 2002. “When we were asked to do Portrait Artist, we were both certain that we didn’t just want to sit there in a tux and a frock,” says Serkis. “There’s a vanity to that which didn’t really appeal to us. But what did appeal was the prospect of being ourselves. So, we’ve put ourselves in a scenario where we imagined that we were looking up at a mountain. But we’re not being characters like in a movie; we’re in a costume that allowed us to tell a story.”

When they first dated in Manchester, Serkis would take Ashbourne for long weekends in the Lake District and then the Alps. “We courted in the mountains,” says Ashbourne, adding with emphasis, “and that’s ice-climbing in the Alps.”

Was Serkis testing her mettle, seeing if they were suited? “Yes, 100 per cent,” he says. “But we were going to be life partners and you can only go climbing with someone that you trust. That is the bottom line.” How dangerous was it? “There were a few hairy moments,” says Ashbourne. “It was a real test of our relationship.”

Thirty-five happy years and three children later (Ruby, Sonny and Louis, are all actors, too), the Alpine ploy appears to have worked. Although it was, perhaps, quite extreme. “Yes,” says Serkis, turning to Ashbourne, “I inherently knew that you were capable and able to face it. And you were.” Ashbourne is equally open about her romantic feelings: “I guess I trusted your faith in me. And that was it.”

There are two prizes available today. One offers kudos, when Serkis and Ashbourne choose their favourite portrait to take home; the other is the big one – the title of Portrait Artist of the Year 2024 and a painting commission that’s worth £10,000. That’s peanuts for Serkis. One of the highest-grossing actors alive, his personal wealth is estimated to be over £29 million.

As one of the keenest drivers of motion capture performance in the film industry, he is as interested in creativity as cash. The director and actor founded The Imaginarium Studios, which specialise in performance capture – his vision and commitment are largely responsible for turning what was once a gimmick into an art form, and he sees strong parallels between what painters do and his own craft.

“I started off painting,” he says. “I wanted to become an artist; I actually went to study visual arts at Lancaster University and then became an actor in my first year. But storytelling was always ingrained in me, hence why I’ve moved more into directing, because it’s like visual story-telling. But the process of creating a character is probably a little bit like painting in terms of laying down marks, and then building on those marks, and gradually filling in and creating the whole character.”

If Serkis were to paint himself, what would be the key? “The eyes, for obvious reasons,” he says. It’s true, they remain the most visible and expressive aspect of a face, the rest of which can often be hidden by special effect or costume, most notably in the Lord of the Rings scene when Serkis turned Sméagol into Gollum – a transformation that required hours of make-up. “I think it was about 15 hours in the end,” says Serkis, who took Ashbourne and the children to New Zealand for the year-long shoot. “We’ve got amazing photographs of our son, Sonny, who was two years old at the time, being cuddled by Gollum,” says Ashbourne.

Today in fact, was inspired by another photograph. On their first trip to the French Alps, at their hotel in Chamonix, the couple saw a 19th-century picture of a female climber crossing a crevasse on a ladder. It was, for Serkis,
“a defining moment,” a revelation of toughness and determination that has stayed with them both for three decades.

“Can you imagine climbing in this gear?” asks Ashbourne. “It’s freezing, you are so cold and you get altitude sickness. It’s so damp and the weather can change on a sixpence. It’s really tiring, a really tough sport. To do that in full Victorian garb, big skirts, big crinolines, the hobnail leather boots, the hat, corset, everything, and then crossing a crevasse on a rickety little ladder! I have such respect for those women.”

Serkis nods. “Before then people didn’t even go above the snow line. They believed in the superstitions, they still thought there were
dragons up there.” I may be wrong, but as he says the word dragons, there’s just the hint of a movie idea in those expressive blue eyes.