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He has played Harry Potter's godfather Sirius Black, egomaniac screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, a dreadlocked pimp and a flatulent grease-stained white knight. Whatever the part Sir Gary Oldman’s performances are indelible and acclaimed, often lifting up an otherwise mediocre film. Yet, “deeply self-critical”, the actor admits to huge self-doubt.
“John Lennon once said he would burn most of the songs and start again. I can understand that,” Oldman told an audience at the Edinburgh TV Festival where he was collecting the festival’s Global Icon Award.
“There’s an anxiety I have going into any project. Working with new directors and new actors I always [wonder] ‘Will I be any good? Will I pull it off ? I have this low frequency of anxiety whenever I start a new job.
“Fear is good but you can’t let it cripple you. A bit of butterflies in your belly and with experience you get them to fly in formation.”
Reflecting on a how “a young boy from South East London” had made it to this stage, Oldman said, “Hard work and commitment, yes, and more than its fair share of luck. Countless directors and producers who took chances on me, and fellow actors who influenced me and thousands of crew members are on every frame I have appeared in.”
Of his entré into acting in 1979 he said, “I wanted to work - bottom line.” His heroes were film stars with working class roots - Alan Bates, Tom Courteny, Albert Finney, Richard Burton and most especially Malcolm McDowell.
“When I looked to America I saw De Niro and Pacino, Gene Hackman, George C Scott, Paul Newman and especially Robert Redford. These were people you revered and the movies they made were something incredible. All I could think about back then was maybe I’ll get a gig in rep.”
In the early eighties, Oldman appeared at the Royal Court Theatre in London and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
“I know that the rep[ertory] system is not as prevalent as it used to be but you can still go to theatre – or the Fringe – and make a fool of yourself,” he said. “In those early experiences you find what you are capable of. I still apply things I learned from [theatre mentors] now from those early days.”
Oldman’s screen career is defined by a whole-hearted commitment to the role. Whether it’s the mania of a drug addicted Federal agent in Leon: The Professional (1994); the weight lost to play Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy (1986); his feral interpretation of the Count in Francis Coppola’s Dracula (1996) or the psychotic hooligan in Alan Clarke’s BBC movie The Firm (1989).
Before his screen debut (in Film 4 produced naval drama Remembrance in 1982) Oldman was in the cast of the play Privates on Parade.
“I had a scene where I wore nothing but boots and a jungle hat,” he said. He wanted his skin to show the tan lines that a soldier on duty in the Pacific might have had. Despite being teased about it by the rest of the troupe he persevered with hours in makeup before each performance.
“I wanted to make it as believable as I could. I’ve always had that attention to detail. A commitment to it.
“You must go to bed thinking about it, wake up thinking about it and spend all day thinking about it. If you don’t have that you must want it more than your life.”
On Darkest Hour, the 2017 film for which Oldman won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Churchill, he described enduring 20 hour shoot days.
“The earliest call I had was 1.10 AM to come in and put make-up on. My head was shaved and I had 4.5 hours in make-up, a 12 hour day, then 45 minutes to take make-up off. Nor can you look at your phone – you have to stare into the mirror. And the make-up people got less sleep than me. I loved every minute of it but you’ve got to be committed.”
On Mank he recalled director David Fincher ordering over 100 takes of a single scene.
“There’s a scene where I have speech walking around the table. We did that 30 times, then we shot all the reactions of the people around the table. I would work with David again even though some days were like that.”
If an actor’s only goal is to be a famous actor, Oldman added, then he despaired.
Having agreed to a project Oldman trusts in his instinct to unlock the character. “I was shooting a film in Brooklyn and I heard a kid walk by the trailer, rapping. I thought – that’s Drexl (the dreadlocked villain he was next to play in True Romance, 1993). So I grabbed him, got him to read my lines into a tape recorder so I could go away and listen to his cadence.”
With Slow Horses’ dishevelled spook chief Jackson Lamb it was costume. “I felt that the physical silhouette should be somewhat iconic but I didn’t know what. Then at the costume fitting I was trying things on all sorts of things but only when I put the mac on did it feel right. It’s also my nod to Columbo.”
He had the New York Irish accent for his gangster character in State of Grace (1990) nailed down but it still felt insubstantial and “very surface” until he tried on a leather jacket. “I had long hair, I swept it back and I knew then that this was Flannery.
Oldman claims the process remains a mystery “but you have to have the intuition to notice it and catch it,” he said. “It could be an accent or music or something on TV. My wife often scolds me for staring at people but I’m filing their behaviour away. Yesterday I took a picture of a guy at the station, discreetly. He will go in my file….”
With the sixth season of Slow Horses about to release on Apple TV, the actor explained why the original role ticked all the boxes.
“I wanted to be part of longform TV since watching I, Claudius and Brideshead Revisited. I wanted something in the spy world because I loved doing Tinker Tailor [Soldier Spy]. I did not want to wear a wig or dress in armour or rubber (which he did for The Fifth Element]. I wanted to come in and do 20 minutes of make-up and speak in an accent not far from my own.”
Tongue in cheek, Oldman says he tasked Douglas Urbanski, his long time production partner, to find something that checked that list.
“Lamb might have been written for Tim Spall [Slow Horses author Mick Herron describes Lamb as ‘Timothy Spall gone to seed’] but it fell from the sky. I was ready for the challenge of something I haven't done before.”
Even with Urbanski on board as producer and with all the talent that Apple TV could muster there was no guarantee Slow Horses would make it past the first season.
“The biggest issue in season one was finding the right tone. What we were trying for was the Coen Brothers. When you watch [a Coens movie] you know what film you are in for instantly. They balance comedy and danger and that is what we were trying to get – not making it overtly comic but a drama peppered with humour.”
It’s surprising to learn that improvisation is allowed on set.
“We start out a scene and find that it needs adjustment and we work it out in the moment,” he explained. “I might think of a quip Lamb would say and we’d a little exchange with Saskia [Reeves] or Jack [Lowden]. This is what is unique about the show in my experience. There is no privilege of authorship so you can contribute ideas and you are heard. People don’t put up a wall and dismiss you which is the case a lot of the time.”
He thinks Lamb resonates with the audience because he can do things – like smoke, drink, and eat fast food with no exercise which no other character is doing on TV.
“He is likely an alcoholic and he has no filter. He is direct. He is not arsed with social norms. That’s the fun of playing him and I think why people enjoy watching him.
“It’s a great part on the page but he doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Jackson Lamb is a team effort and we all bring our innate humanity to it. There’s a lot of mechanics that go into it and a lot of creative collaboration.”
He added that for the six years of the show’s run he has had none of the fear that usually dogs his mind.
“Occasionally you work with an arsehole you never want to work with again but on Slow Horses I even look forward to seeing the producers,” he added.
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