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.
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.
Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.
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.
On set I keep myself to myself; I’d rather the director speak up. I’m not gonna direct a younger actor. I think the power of example works best, actually.
The great thing about having been in a lot of make-up, and stuff like that, is that when you’re working with someone who’s in it, and you’ve been there and done it, but you’re not in it anymore, you feel so good.
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.
