Gary Oldman

For an actor whose early career was defined by volatility — on- and offscreen — that’s no small feat. Born in 1958 in working-class New Cross, South London, Oldman came up through British theater before breaking out in the 1980s with fearless portrayals of damaged men: punk icon Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986) and murdered playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987). By the mid-’90s, his talent for feral, unhinged roles — in Léon: The Professional , The Fifth Element , True Romance — had made him Hollywood’s go-to psycho. On Air Force One , Harrison Ford dubbed him “Scary Gary.” But typecasting persisted. “I put myself out of work,” Oldman says of his decision to break free from his “rent-a-villain” persona. The gamble worked. A late-career reinvention brought gravitas and restraint: Sirius Black in Harry Potter , police commissioner Jim Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. These quieter turns reaffirmed his screen presence — without the pyrotechnics. (Getting off the booze helped. Oldman, now 28 years sober, says he used to “sweat vodka.”) Oldman’s Oscar-nominated turn in the 2011 John le Carré adaptation Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy . Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) earned him his first Oscar nomination, for a role so internalized it left him rattled. “It was a really naked role,” says producing partner Douglas Urbanski. “It almost gave him a nervous breakdown.” More prestige roles followed. His towering performance as Churchill in Darkest Hour (2017) brought Oldman his long-overdue Oscar. Mank (2020), a more vulnerable portrayal of the witty, self-destructive Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, brought him his third nomination. But his turn in Slow Horses — as the brilliant, disheveled MI5 misfit Jackson Lamb — may be his most complete yet. In the Apple TV+ hit, nominated for five Emmys, including best drama series and best actor for Oldman, he gets to fuse the feral, the funny and the fatherly (not to mention flatulent). Now newly knighted (he received the honor from King Charles in June), Sir Gary Oldman spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about sobriety and second chances, convincing Nolan to cast him against type — and why playing the shambolic Jackson Lamb is one of the great joys of his career. Let’s start like a therapy session. Tell me about your childhood: How did the way you grew up influence your work? It sounds cliché, but the arts — acting — was a way of escaping from the options that were available. Not that it was all so horrendous, but discovering acting was a sort of window that opened onto the world. My mother was behind the dream, the ambition. I didn’t have any resistance. I wasn’t from a family where they wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. This profession is precarious, and at any one given point, you know, 99.9 percent of the profession are out of work. So there was no security in wanting to go into the arts. I’ve a work ethic, and some talent, but really I’ve just had diabolical good luck. I’ve had the usual sort of peaks and valleys of any kind of career. But for the most part, I’ve worked consistently as an actor, and that is extraordinary. How did you get cast as James Gordon for Batman Begins ? It’s pretty much your first purely good character. It’s like we’ve been talking about good fortune. I was in the running for the role of Scarecrow, and after Chris met me he found the idea of me playing Jim Gordon very intriguing. Cillian Murphy got the Scarecrow role, which is the first time Chris worked with Cillian. So if that hadn’t happened, would he have gone on to play Oppenheimer? I’ve heard so many sliding-door moments with you. Weren’t you considered to play the lead in Edward Scissorhands ? You have to remember at this point in time you’re not looking at Tim Burton’s whole body of work. I read this quirky, strange little script, and I didn’t get it. The Avon lady and the kid with the scissor hands. It just