Oscar Profile #356: Gary Oldman

Born March 21, 1958 in London, England to a welder and his homemaker wife, Gary Oldman’s alcoholic father left home when he was seven. Raised from then by his now 99-year-old mother, Oldman left school at 16 to work in a sports shop. A pianist as a child, and later a singer, he gave both up to become an actor after seeing Malcolm McDowell in 1971’s Raging Moon, released as Long Ago Tomorrow in the U.S.

The young actor made his professional stage debut in 1979 and his film debut in 1982’s Remembrance. It was Alex Cox’s Sid and Nancy four years later that made him a star as punk rocker Sid Vicious. Stephen Frears’ Prick Up Your Ears, the following year, brought him his first BAFTA nomination for Best Actor. Memorable performances in Track 29, Criminal Law, We Think the World of YouChattahoochee, State of Grace and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead which earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Actor. He then played another memorable real-life character, Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film, JFK.

The 1990s continued to be a memorable period for Oldman with such films as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, True Romance, Romeo Is Bleeding, Leon: The Professional, Immortal Beloved, Murder in the First, The Scarlet Letter, The Fifth Element and Air Force One.

Oldman received BAFTA nominations for writing and producing 1997’s Nil by Mouth which he also directed. He received a second Independent Spirit Award nomination for 2000’s The Contender. He was part of two of Hollywood’s biggest franchises in the early years of the new century. He was Sirius Black in three Harry Potter beginning in 2004 and Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s Black Knight Trilogy beginning in 2005. He finally received an Oscar nomination for 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Subsequent films have included Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Criminal, The Space Between Us and The Hitman’s Bodyguard.

Oscar buzz began for Oldman for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour as soon as the 2017 film was announced. It proved prophetic when he won in early March.

Gary Oldman has been married five times, to Lesley Manville (1987-1990, 1 child), Uma Thurman (1990-1992), Donya Fiorentino (1997-2001, 2 children), Alexandra Edenborough (2008-2015) and Gisele Schmidt (1997-present). First wife Lesley Manville was an Oscar nominee in 1997 as well. She was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for Phnatom Thread.

Oldman has no less than five films in various states of production. He’s now 60 years old.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

SID AND NANCY (1986), directed by Alex Cox

Alex Cox’s award-winning film examines the dirty underbelly of punk rock in which the film’s protagonists, Oldman as Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious and Chloe Webb as his junkie girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, are portrayed as a pathetic self-destructive pair. While both actors were admired for their performances, Webb took the brunt of the critics’ prizes that year, including a Best Actress award from both the Boston Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics and a runner-up citation form the New York Film Critics. Oldman was cited by the Evening Standard British Film Awards.

PRICK UP YOUR EARS (1987), directed by Stephen Frears

Oldman’s portrayal of playwright Joe Orton in his abusive relationship with fellow playwright Kenneth Halliwell and his brutal murder by Halliwell, earned him a Best Actor award from the London Film Critics and a BAFTA nomination for his performance opposite Alfred Molina. It was Vanessa Redgrave, however, as Orton’s agent, Peggy Ramsay, who received the brunt of the film’s awards including not only BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations, but runner-up citations from the Los Angels Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics and a win from the New York Film Critics.

THE DARK KNIGHT TRILOGY (2005-2012), directed by Christopher Nolan

Nolan’s very dark reboot of the Batman franchise provided Oldman with one of the best roles of his later career. As Jim Gordon, he was a young cop who befriends hero Christian Bale in 2005’s Batman Begins, a police lieutenant who fakes his own death to uncover a villain in 2008’s The Dark Knight and the police commissioner in 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises. As usual it was other actors in the franchise who got the awards recognition, among them Bale, Liam Neeson, Anne Hathaway and most memorably, Heath Ledger who won a posthumous Oscar for The Dark Knight.

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (2011), directed by Tomas Alfredson

John le Carré’s 1974 novel was first filmed as a seven-part 1979 TV mini-series for which Alec Guinness won a BAFTA for his portrayal of British master-spy, George Smiley. The novel’s 1979 sequel, Smiley’s People was made into a six-part mini-series in 1982 for which Guinness again won a BAFTA. The 2011 film crams most of the events of the 1979 mini-series into its 2 hour and 2 minute running time, which makes it a bit tough to follow for some, but there are rewards aplenty in savoring Oldman’s Oscar-nominated performance as well as those of John Hurt, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch.

DARKEST HOUR (2017), directed by Joe Wright

Oldman finally has his Oscar, but sadly it’s not for one of his best performances. There is nothing technically wrong with it but yelling and screaming through layers of blubber is something most great actors can pull off. There is nothing really distinguished about his performance in a role that has been done to perfection before by the likes of Albert Finney, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Gambon, Brian Cox, John Lithgow and many others. His win was clearly one for a stellar career that should have netted him a win before, most deservedly for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.