Gary Oldman was the first cover star of Loaded’s first issue 30 years ago, in May 1994. Back then, we called him the “De Niro of British cinema”. Today, all comparisons to others seem trivial. He’s Gary Oldman. He’s like no-one else.
For our 30th anniversary special, let’s rewind his killer career back to the beginning when Oldman was still the new kid on the block…
"I'm not interested in cuddly roles. Playing bastards is far more interesting." Gary Oldman, Loaded, May 1994.
For more than 30 years, and more than 75 films, Gary Oldman has brought to life every human flaw and virtue possible as he submerged himself into cinema’s greatest dramatic characters: Winston Churchill, Sirius Black, George Smiley, Beethoven, Sid Vicious, Dracula, Drexl Spivey – “Now I know I'm pretty, but I ain't as pretty as a couple of titties” – Lee Harvey Oswald, The Devil, Commissioner Gordon.
And Zorg.
Don’t forget Zorg.
(And, of course, his blink-and-miss portrayal of Harry S Truman in last year’s Oppenheimer was as brief as it was brutal, precisely what was required of the role.)
During his three decade rise to fame only a handful of actors have exhibited the same transformative prowess as him, allowing him carving out a niche as perhaps the most versatile performer of his generation. You can call him a “chameleon of cinema” if you want. But chameleon’s are one-dimensional. Oldman’s a machine gun; a cruel weapon capable of delivering immense firepower at the most tenderest squeeze of a delicate trigger.
An apt metaphor perhaps. The young Oldman first took up acting back in 1979 after he saw Malcolm MacDowell gunning down teachers and parents from the roof of the school in the rebel classic If. "Something about Malcolm just arrested me, and I connected, and I said, 'I wanna do that,” he told Charlie Rose in 2014. After that there was no going back. He jacked in his day job and became a proper luvvie, getting himself a degree in Theatre Arts from Sidcup’s Rose Bruford College of Theatre, a qualification few of his working-class family would have predicted and yet found not-unsurprising considering his talent for getting into trouble. After his father died by the bottle in 1985, and his teachers constantly told him he was thick, Oldman has readily admitted that if he hadn't become an actor he'd have probably become a criminal.
"Acting is the sexiest thing in the world, it's all in the loins."
Gary Oldman, Loaded, May 1994
In his earliest days, Oldman set out his stool with a range of controversial and cranky roles – killers, hooligans, bent cops, bent playwrights, junkies, punk rockers, assassins, and vampires. Proof that he was deadly serious about his art, but not at the expense of humour.
It was as Sid Vicious in 1986’s Sid and Nancy that Oldman broke through on film, though he turned the role down twice. "I wasn't really that interested in Sid Vicious and the punk movement,” Oldman told Terry Gross on NPR in 1998. “I'd never followed it. It wasn't something that interested me. And I sort-of had my nose in the air thinking 'The theatre is so much more superior'." When he took the role at the insistence of his agent, Oldman disappeared into it, capturing the visceral brutality of Sid addictions with an intensity that left audiences in shock and awe. Even Vicious’s former bandmate John Lydon, who hated the film, described Oldman as a "bloody good actor". Uma Thurman took note too. The pair dated, and were engaged from 1989-1992, one of the actor’s first dabbles with beautiful women too many to mention here.
Throughout the early 1990s, Oldman solidified his reputation as the most versatile actor in the business delivering jaw-dropping performances in Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (as Dracula), Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (as Rosencrantz), Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance and in Luc Besson's 1994 assassin hit Léon. The latter two of which Oldman portrayed Drexl Spivey, and in Léon, the unhinged psycho and corrupt DEA officer Norman Stansfield, two roles widely considered as the best Hollywood villains and worthy of repeat viewings if just for Oldman’s scenery chewing.
"As an actor, you have to be willing to take risks and push yourself out of your comfort zone."
Gary Oldman, The Independent, February 2011
Not content with keeping in his comfort zones, in 1997 Oldman directed, produced, and wrote the award-winning Nil by Mouth, a razor-sharp dissection of a struggling working-class south London family and its rough, short-tempered patriarch. “'The film was a love letter to my father because I needed to resolve some issues in order to be able to forgive him,” Oldman said at the film’s release. It went on to win the BAFTA for Best British and Best Screenplay and is now considered one of top 100 best British films of the 20th-century. Not bad for a boy from sarf Lundun.
(The film also features the word ‘Cunt’ 82 times, more than any other film in history, and word ‘Fuck’ 428 times which, at the time, was more than any film, though has since been superseded.)
“I think acting is a bit like wanking.”
Gary Oldman, Loaded, May 1994
Oldman’s return to being in front of the camera almost began with a bang after he was briefly considered for the role of Morpheus in 1999’s The Matrix which, let’s be honest, would have been fucking terrific, if only to see Keanu become even more bamboozled. No matter, the noughty new millennium saw Oldman back on the naughtiest of form landing a wealth of blockbuster roles: Sirius Black (Harry Potter's godfather) in the Harry Potter film series, for four films from 2004 to 2011. In 2005, he starred as Commissioner Jim Gordon in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005), a role that he reprised in the now-revered The Dark Knight (2008) and its conclusion The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Gordon was the perfect fit for Oldman. Though he originally read for the Scarecrow part. “This was about the time when I was sort of thinking, ‘I’ve had enough of playing villains.’ My manager who suggested to Chris Nolan, 'What about Jim Gordon?' And Chris went 'Hm, that’s interesting.'” Finally, Oldman was recast as the hero. Not the hero we deserved, the hero we needed, as Gordon famously narrated. The hero role Oldman deserved came next. It was his defining role in a career of defining roles.
"Booze, drugs, divorce, womanising, rock 'n' roll, writers and poets.
It's what I do for a living. I don't go to a post office and hand out pension books."
Gary Oldman, Loaded, May 1994
Oldman's disappeared completely – literally and figurately – into character in 2017 when he transformed into the role of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour. Oldman sat in the make-up chair 63 times, for more than 200 hours over the course of the shoot, to take on Churchill’s famously jowly appearance. Thankfully, the movie was a masterpiece, and worthy of the effort. Taking on Britain’s most famous Brit took true grit, and Oldman’s delivered. His performance was a tour de force and one that gave him the Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Actor. His Oscar speech said it all: “The movies, such is their power, captivated a young man from South London and gave him a dream…. Put the kettle on, Mum, I'm bringing Oscar home.”
“It's a strange business, a strange living to make. It's a very strange game to be a player in.”
Gary Oldman, Loaded, May 1994
At age 66, Gary Oldman is now, well, an old man. But that doesn’t’ appear to be slowing him down. He’s currently the lead in Apple TV’s most-recent slow burn hit, Slow Horses, as the seedy spook Jackson Lamb, a role he owns outright, as fierce and in your face as any role Oldman played as a younger man. Next year, he is part of an all-star ensemble cast for Paolo Sorrentino’s as-yet-untitled follow-up to his Oscar-nominated 2021 feature, Hand of God. And where he goes after that is, well, anybody’s guess. Psycho or saint? We’ll just have to wait…