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The industry has changed. Two years ago I could tell a company I’ve got Russell Crowe and that would get the film made. Now they’d ask ‘And who’s the girl?’ Just one famous face isn’t enough any more.

Gary Oldman

Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.
GARY OLDMAN

Actor Movie People Play Yourself
I want my weekends off and I want to put my kids to bed. Those are good reasons to want to be in ‘Batman 2’.
GARY OLDMAN

Children Goodness Myself Reason
People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can’t get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.
GARY OLDMAN

Actor Different Imagination Offering People Yourself
Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that.
GARY OLDMAN

Actor Enough Goodness Greatness Yourself
I did have a knack for playing weirdos. There’s still sort of this perception of me out there as being this crazy guy.
GARY OLDMAN

Crazy Man Myself Perception Play Weird
So Harry Potter came in and it is nice that I have kids of the right age. I took them to London and they walked around the set and met Harry Potter and that is thrilling.
GARY OLDMAN

Age Children Myself Right Thrill
Each role you play, they set a bar of challenges that you meet. And in the past, I’ve played characters that emotionally expressed themselves a bit more in a physical way. It was a joy, actually.
GARY OLDMAN

Bar Challenge Emotional Expression Happiness Joy Myself Play Role
You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it’s Gary Oldman crying; it’s not the character crying.
GARY OLDMAN

Break Character Cry Knowledge Prism Yourself
Shakespeare doesn’t really write subtext, you play the subtext.
GARY OLDMAN

Play Writing Yourself
I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can’t really move from it: it’s on buses, in stores, it’s everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.
GARY OLDMAN

Aware Book Children Myself Small Store
Rather like Batman, I embody the themes of the movie which are the values of family, courage and compassion and a sense of right and wrong, good and bad and justice.
GARY OLDMAN

Bad Family Goodness Justice Movie Myself Theme Value Wrong
I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me.
GARY OLDMAN

Breathe Gate Magic Movie Myself Projection Way
To be able to do this job in the first place you’ve got to have a bit of an ego.
GARY OLDMAN

Character Job Place Profession Requirement Yourself
I’m still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent – you get contaminated after so long.
GARY OLDMAN

British Contamination Feeling Myself Time
We’re given a code to live our lives by. We don’t always follow it, but it’s still there.
GARY OLDMAN

Code Follow Live Ourselves
I took a bit of a back seat, I had kids and I wanted to focus on them. There’s that period in the late ’90s, the early 2000s, where I didn’t do a great deal.
GARY OLDMAN

Children Deal Focus Greatness Myself Period Time

The industry has changed. Two years ago I could tell a company I’ve got Russell Crowe and that would get the film made. Now they’d ask ‘And who’s the girl?’ Just one famous face isn’t enough any more.

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The industry has changed. Two years ago I could tell a company I’ve got Russell Crowe and that would get the film made. Now they’d ask ‘And who’s the girl?’ Just one famous face isn’t enough any more.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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