Not Andy's Hands

Although Tim Robbins played Andy Dufrense, the close-up shots of his hands are not his, but rather those of director Frank Darabont. The scenes that show Dufrense's hands loading the revolver in the opening scene and carving his name into his cell wall were done in post-production and were finalized by Darabont.

The reason that Robbins' hands weren't used was that Darabont wanted the scenes to be done in a particular way and decided he needed to do them himself to create the final product he envisioned.