Gary Oldman

Gary Leonard Oldman

21 March 1958

An English actor, filmmaker, and musician. 

Oldman studied with the Young People's Theatre in Greenwich during the mid-1970s, while working jobs on assembly lines, as a porter in an operating theatre, selling shoes and beheading pigs in an abattoir. He later won a scholarship to attend the Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, Southeast London, from which he graduated with a BA in Acting in 1979. Oldman describes himself as 'shy' although a diligent worker during his time at Rose Bruford, where he performed roles such as Puck in the performance of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". After leaving school, Oldman was the first in his class to receive professional work.

In 1991, Oldman starred in his first US blockbuster, playing Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's "JFK". The following year, he starred as Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's romance-horror Bram Stoker's "Dracula". A commercially successful film adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, it was a box office success worldwide. Oldman's performance was recognised as the best male performance of 1992 by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, which awarded Oldman the Best Actor award.

As actor, producer

• Remembrance (1982)
• Meantime (1983)
• Dramarama (1984)
• Morgan's Boy (1984)
• Summer Season (1985)
• Honest, Decent & True (1985)
• Sid and Nancy (1986)
• Prick Up Your Ears (1987)
• Track 29 (1988)
• We Think the World of You (1988)
• Criminal Law (1989)
• Chattahoochee (1989)
• The Firm (1989)
• Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)
• State of Grace (1990)
• Henry & June (1990)
• JFK (1991)
• Heading Home (1991)
• Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
• True Romance (1993)
• Romeo Is Bleeding (1993)
• Fallen Angels (1993)
• Léon: The Professional (1994)
• Immortal Beloved (1994)
• Murder in the First (1995)
• The Scarlet Letter (1995)
• Basquiat (1996)
• The Fifth Element (1997)
• Air Force One (1997)
• Nil by Mouth (1997)
• Lost in Space (1998)
• Quest for Camelot (1998)
• Jesus (1999)
• The Contender (2000)
• Monsignor Renard (2000)
• Nobody's Baby (2001)
• Friends (2001)
• Hannibal (2001)
• Interstate 60 (2002)
• Greg the Bunny (2002)
• The Hire: Beat the Devil (2002)
• Tiptoes (2003)
• Sin (2003)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
• Who's Kyle? (2004)
• Batman Begins (2005)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
• Dead Fish (2005)
• The Backwoods (2006)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
• The Dark Knight (2008)
• The Unborn (2009)
• Rain Fall (2009)
• A Christmas Carol (2009)
• Planet 51 (2009)
• The Book of Eli (2010)
• Countdown to Zero (2010)
• One Night in Turin (2010)
• Red Riding Hood (2011)
• Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
• Guns, Girls and Gambling (2011)
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
• Lawless (2012)
• Paranoia (2013)
• RoboCop (2014)
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
• Child 44 (2015)
• Man Down (2015)
• Criminal (2015)
• The Space Between Us (2016)
• The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
• Darkest Hour (2017)
• Hunter Killer (2017)

Quotations

* * *

I was quiet, a loner. I was one of those children where, if you put me in a room and gave me some crayons and a pencils, you wouldn't hear from me for nine straight hours. And I was always drawing racing cars and rockets and spaceships and planes, things that were very fast that would take me away.

* * *

You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.

* * *

Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position.

* * *

People who know me , they know I have a sense of humor, I'm a bit of a joker, a bit of a clown really, and I would love someone to exploit that side of me and send me a romantic comedy.

* * *

Political correctness has become a straightjacket.

* * *

Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you're really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.

* * *

My favorite meal would have to be good old-fashioned eggs, over easy, with bacon. Many others, but you can't beat that on a Sunday morning, especially with a cup of tea.

* * *

Reality TV to me is the museum of social decay.

* * *

And costume is so important for an actor. It absolutely helps to get into character; it's the closest thing to you, it touches you. Some actors like to go into make-up and then put their clothes on, but I like to dress first; that's my routine.

* * *

A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over.

* * *

Speaking very generally, I find that women are spiritually, emotionally, and often physically stronger than men.

* * *

What other people think of me is none of my business.

* * *

Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.

* * *

Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that.

* * *

I was brought up by my mother and my two sisters, although they're older than me and fled the nest very young, so I was technically raised as an only child, but I was very much loved.

* * *

My passion and energy get mistaken for anger.

* * *

Rather like Batman, I embody the themes of the movie which are the values of family, courage and compassion and a sense of right and wrong, good and bad and justice.

* * *

Growing up in a particular neighborhood, growing up in a working-class family, not having much money, all of those things fire you and can give you an edge, can give you an anger.

* * *

Overall I enjoy a certain anonymity. I live a very normal, very ordinary life.

* * *

I did have a knack for playing weirdos. There's still sort of this perception of me out there as being this crazy guy.

* * *

I wanted to play Dracula because I wanted to say: 'I've crossed oceans of time to find you.' It was worth playing the role just to say that line.

* * *

'Nil By Mouth' was a bit autobiographical, but as I always pointed out at the time, that's not my dad.

* * *

I applaud anything that can take a kid away from a PlayStation or a Gameboy. That is a miracle in itself.

* * *

I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That's the magic of it to me.

* * *

How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

* * *

It's funny: I'm a lifelong musician, but because I principally play the piano it's been a solitary thing.

* * *

I know what it means to do a job... I worked in a factory. I respect people in the service industry. What irritates me more is when people aren't respectful. There's a lot of nonsense behavior, especially in a place like Hollywood. The money, the power, they create little monsters.

* * *

We lived in a flat that you could pretty much fit in my current kitchen. No wonder people drink! I can't understand why they don't throw themselves off the balconies.

* * *

You can play older than yourself. You can play younger than yourself up to a point, and then that just becomes impossible because you carry a weight with you that you can't shift, unless you have very boyish looks.

* * *

Interesting things come your way but as you get older, your lifestyle changes. I don't want to travel; I don't want to be in a hotel room away from my family.

* * *

People have an idea that one is in control of a career, a lot more than you really are. You can engineer things to an extent. But you are at the mercy of what comes in across the desk.

* * *

I'm not the best audience for that because I'm not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that.

* * *

It's always hard when you're playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There's a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone's idea of that.

* * *

You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.

* * *

Being an actor is a good way to earn a living. And to meet fabulous people. It's great to live very comfortably. I've been lucky, I've had a lot of fun with great roles, but it is true that if I were extremely rich, I would stop and I would go to play football on a beach in the Caribbean with my children.

* * *

It's becoming increasingly harder and harder; there's no such thing as independent film anymore. There aren't any, they don't exist. In the old days you could go and get a certain amount of the budget with foreign sales, now everybody wants a marketable angle.

* * *

I hadn't worked for a couple of years so I thought it would be nice to earn some money and pay the bills.

* * *

Culturally, politically, everywhere you look... Read the newspaper. Go online. Our world has gone to hell.

* * *

If one could have a wish, or an alternative life, I would've liked to have been John Lennon.

* * *

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

* * *

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

* * *

And of course I've got kids of my own now, and they love me being in the Harry Potter films. I'm now part of a phenomenon. You become incredibly cool to your kids, and you get a young fan base. So you became the cool dad at school. You're suddenly hip.

* * *

At the Oscars, if you didn't vote for '12 Years a Slave,' you were a racist. You have to be very careful about what you say. I do have particular views and opinions that most of this town doesn't share, but it's not like I'm a fascist or a racist. There's nothing like that in my history.

* * *

I'm rarely asked to play the smartest man in the room.

* * *

Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.

* * *

Well, I needed the work - that's the honest answer. I haven't worked for a while, a couple of years. So I thought it would be nice to get back to work and earn some money.

* * *

I don't think Hollywood knows what to do with me. I would imagine that when it comes to romantic comedies, my name would be pretty low down on the list.

* * *

People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can't get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.

* * *