Gary Oldman

“If you can make audiences gasp, that's the best you get,” says Gary Oldman. “It's better than sex, it's such a turn-on. You can't achieve that kind of excitement if you work in an office. It's a funny way of existing, I suppose. Nice one, though.”

According to Hollywood casting agents, Oldman must be one of the most evil men on earth. In The Fifth Element he played an intergalactic gun runner; Air Force One, a Soviet terrorist and in Lost in Space he is psychotic saboteur Dr Zachary Smith.

“He's on fire,” admits Anthony Hopkins, Oldman's co-star in Bram Stoker's Dracula. “And I think you need to have that passion to be an actor. But you also have to be careful it doesn't consume you.”

The fire that burns inside Gary Oldman has threatened to engulf him more than once. After years of alcohol abuse, the South London-born actor is now painfully thin and rather gaunt. His speech is slow and calculated but every so often there's the manic passion for his craft that has made him one of the most sought after actors on the planet.

Since making his directorial debut in 1997 with the highly acclaimed Nil By Mouth, Oldman has proved there's a lot more to him than just playing goatee bearded villains. Much of the anger inside him is his way of exorcising demons of the past. Something he managed to much acclaim in Nil By Mouth.

He admits his father Leonard did drink himself to an early grave and neglected his family.

“My father used to sit in the same chair as the man in Nil By Mouth. The father in my movie staggers across to the pub and never gives his daughter a cuddle.
“When my dad left us we did not have two halfpennies to rub together but my mum, Kay Delahunty, got us through, she was heroic.”

Oldman attempted to sort out his problems with a spot of alcohol rehab in 1994, determined to rid himself of the sins which destroyed his father.

“I went for treatment for alcoholism, but I wasn't allowed to do that anonymously because it was a good story.
“I understand that, so I decided to come clean about it and not hide it. In a way I was challenged and I was forced to say ‘I have this illness’.

“I think it is very much a case of the sins of the father visiting the son. We are all a lot sicker than we think and most people need therapy. What I have tried to do in my life is break out of that cycle.”

Oldman came to prominence on TV in the Eighties in Mike Leigh's Meantime followed by some stunning turns as punk rocker Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986) and playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987). By 1991, he hit the big time in a host of American films such as the under-rated State of Grace (one of Oldman's favourites), Criminal Law and JFK.

He then fought off stiff competition to play the prince of darkness in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Director Luc Besson — who also produced Nil By Mouth — thinks Oldman is the best actor on earth, having directed him in Leon and The Fifth Element.

“Why do I play so many bad guys?” wonders Oldman. “I guess they're the scripts that come through the letterbox. I'd love to play in a romantic comedy but I just don't get offered the roles,” he confesses.
“It's fun to play the bad guy, certainly in movies which have a heightened style to them.”
For his 1998 movie, Oldman almost managed to upstage the $80million Lost in Space production — although that was never his intention.

“You should never go into a film and try to upstage the sets and clothes. You simply have to surrender to the sheer scale of it.”

“Acting in a movie like The Fifth Element threw a lot of theories out about method acting, because most of the time you're working against something that isn't there,” he says.

“Like I'm playing at flying a spaceship, but I'm really just sitting, moving like I'm doing it. The director has to assure me it will look like I'm in a spaceship.”

Oldman, a product of the Royal Shakespeare Company, admits he has the image of an intense person.

“I guess there's a perception that I'm difficult, and mad and crazy and that's why I play these characters. But as Luc Besson will tell you, I'm really a pussycat to deal with.”

Oldman says he likes wearing the two hats of acting and directing.

“They're very different experiences. Directing a film is probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

“I like being an actor and being around actors. What I did like about directing is you're constantly involved, the creative process is always working.”

“As an actor I've always tried to be director-friendly. I never realised how hard it is until I did it.”

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