Gary Oldman
Gary Oldman is an actor, born 1958.
Gary Oldman came out of the London stage, starting in theatre in 1979 and working through the Royal Court and the Royal Shakespeare Company before Remembrance gave him a film debut in 1982. His name was made by a run of real people: Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy, Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears, a football hooligan in the television film The Firm, and then Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK.
For roughly a decade he was the most dangerous actor in American movies without being American. Norman Stansfield in Leon, Drexl Spivey in True Romance and Zorg in The Fifth Element are variations on one trick: he opens a scene above the register the film expects, leaves himself nowhere to go, then goes there anyway. Directors hired him for the voltage until the voltage stopped being interesting, and the late nineties are full of films that wanted nothing else from him.
The second act is the better one. He swapped the noise for stillness, playing Jim Gordon in Christopher Nolan's Batman films as a tired working policeman rather than a symbol, then George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy almost entirely through listening. Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour won him the Academy Award, alongside a Golden Globe and one of his three BAFTAs, and Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses has given him the best role of his later career: a repulsive, brilliant spy chief played with open disgust for the whole profession.
His films have grossed over eleven billion dollars, which is not the figure anyone would guess from a filmography this contrarian, and he was knighted for the work.
Movies (78)
- The Dark Knight (2008)
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
- The Fifth Element (1997)
- Batman Begins (2005)
- Léon: The Professional (1994)
- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
- Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
- Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
- Hunter Killer (2018)
- Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
- True Romance (1993)
- The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017)
- Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard (2021)
- Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts (2022)
- The Book of Eli (2010)
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
- Darkest Hour (2017)
- Lawless (2012)
- RoboCop (2014)
- A Christmas Carol (2009)
- JFK (1991)
- Parthenope (2024)
- Air Force One (1997)
- Criminal (2016)
- Lost in Space (1998)
- The Unborn (2009)
- Planet 51 (2009)
TV (6)
Where to start with Gary Oldman
There are two valid entry points, depending which Oldman you want. For the loud one, Léon: The Professional, where he plays a corrupt DEA agent as a man permanently one pill past composure, still the most imitated villain performance of the 1990s.
For the quiet one, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He barely speaks in the first half hour and dominates every frame he is in, which inverts everything the early career was built on.
After that: Bram Stoker's Dracula for the most operatic thing he has attempted, JFK for uncanny mimicry put to serious use, and The Fifth Element for an accent and a haircut no other actor would have risked. The Dark Knight rewards attention specifically for how much he underplays inside a very loud film. Slow Horses is where he is now and where he is best, so save it, then watch all of it.
The Gary Oldman villains that built the reputation
Before the awards there was a decade of playing the loudest person in the film. Stansfield rattling his pills in Leon, Dracula through three separate makeup rigs, a hijacker with a plan and an accent. The performances are big on purpose, and together they explain why directors reached for him whenever a film needed a threat with a personality.
Oldman playing it quiet, after everyone expected noise
The second half of the career runs on restraint. Gordon is a decent man in an indecent city and Oldman gives him no flourishes at all. Smiley in Tinker Tailor is mostly listening, and Darkest Hour buries the whole performance under prosthetics and still finds the man.
Oldman inside other people's franchises
Sirius Black, a peacock warlord, a human commander in an ape war, a compromised scientist in a robot suit. Franchise work pays for the small films, but he rarely coasts through it, and the Potter films in particular hand him the closest thing he has to a warm role.