Gary Oldman

Interview By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Gary Oldman, a man who's fully earned the title of modern legend, has worn plenty of different hats over his twenty-five year film career.

On one hand, he's a reliable Hollywood villain, in everything from the popular (Air Force One) to the unpopular (Lost in Space) to the terrific (The Professional).

On another hand, he's also always been able to attach himself to projects that hover somewhere between quirky and prestigious: Sid & Nancy, JFK, and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, for example.

And finally, he seems to be approaching household name status thanks to a late-career renaissance in two major franchises: the Harry Potter series, in which he played Sirius Black for three movies, and the Batman franchise. In both Batman Begins and its follow-up The Dark Knight (in theaters now, as if you didn't know), he plays cop and Batman ally Jim Gordon, a pivotal character in the Batman mythos.

It's a tribute to Oldman's chameleonic skills that, side by side, you'd be hard-pressed to realize Sirius and Jim are the same person.

Oldman's reasons for accepting the role in the Batman franchise boil down to one thing: working with director Christopher Nolan who before taking on Batman cut his teeth on acclaimed thrillers Memento and Insomnia (and since has also directed the mindblower The Prestige). When asked about what style he used to approach his role, Oldman defers to Nolan.

"The director sets the tone," Oldman says. "He's the real barometer of how you play your character. There's a realism to Batman, but it's slightly pumped up, slightly heightened. Chris doesn't want that realistic sort of acting that, you know, would be found in a Ken Loach film. You've got to know the style of the piece you're in. Gielgud once said, 'Style is knowing what play you're in.'"

The basic appeal of playing Gordon was simple. "What makes it more interesting for me, is that it's interesting against all the other types of characters I've played," Oldman says of his villainous past. "It is nice to play someone who's really the moral center of the piece, someone who's strong and has got great backbone and character, and is virtuous and honest and incorruptible, and all these things that I think Jim Gordon is. All those qualities make him fun to play -- versus some of those other wacky or strange people I've played in the past. This is a conscious decision just to turn the ship around and do other things."

The all-star cast, which includes Christian Bale as Batman, Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, and of course the late Heath Ledger as the Joker was another reason for looking forward to work every day. But working with Bale and Ledger proved to be quite different experiences.

"They're two very different people: Christian is darker than Heath," he says. "I know that sounds kind of weird, but he very much keeps to himself. I've never really worked with him as Bruce Wayne; I have one little scene with him in this movie, but I never really get to work with him as Bruce Wayne otherwise. He very much keeps himself to himself. He's just very quietly intense."

Oldman's experience with Ledger was different, and one that contradicts some of the rumors connected to his death. "Between takes, he very much wanted to laugh," Oldman says of his late co-star. "I think people are looking in the Heath story for a darker story than what's really there. You know: 'He was so contaminated by the Joker that he couldn't sleep,' and all that stuff. I didn't see any of that.

"I think there was, perhaps, a friendship there, I'd like to think the potential of a friendship," he continues. "[Heath's death] was just a silly sort of accident, one of those things, what I call the Cosmic Shit-Hammer. That's it, it just happened, and there you are."

Oldman's willingness to appear in major blockbusters over the past few years is somewhat surprising given recent comments of his that seem to express ambivalence about continuing in the profession. "I've been doing it for a long time and you can get tired," Oldman was quoted as saying about a year ago; he also mentioned that his love for acting was "withering." Today, those comments seem to stem not from a desire to quit necessarily, but simply from a wised-up temperament that comes with turning fifty (as he did in March).

"I used to think about stuff too much," he says, "and I've kind of stopped. I think I've gotten to a point where I just say: oh, fuck art, just live. Not get to the point where you're sort of contemplating your own navel."

So instead of talking laboriously about his craft, for example, he downplays it. When someone mentioned that he tends to go for broke with every character he plays, he laughs it off. " I give the illusion I go to the wall," he says. "But I don't. That's the trick, that's the facility to do it. It's all smoke and mirrors. That's my job."

And part of that smoke and mirrors apparently extends to the promotion of his films. After fielding the eighth or ninth question about the genius of Christopher Nolan, the care Oldman chooses in picking roles, or the possibility of his retirement, the actor finally levels with us.

"Look, as you get older, you just go, 'I've lost the ambition I once had, that drive, that fire underneath me,'" he says. "I don't mean it negatively, I just mean there are other things and other priorities. I mean, people say, 'Why do you like working with Chris Nolan'' And you go, 'Well he's a very talented man, and he's a very talented director,' and he's all of those things. You know what, though' He finishes in time for me to get home for dinner and put my kids to bed. He's not a lunatic who wants to work seventeen hours a day. I don't want to work with anyone like that. I want my weekends off, and I want to put my kids to bed. Nolan facilitates it. Those are good reasons to want to be in Batman 2, yeah'" Oldman grins wider than he has the whole interview. "I like that guy, plus I get home for dinner."