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 OLDMANOn 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.
More Gary Oldman Quotes
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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 -
My favorite meal would have to be good old-fashioned eggs, over easy, with bacon. Many others, but you can’t beat that on a Sunday morning, especially with a cup of tea.
GARY OLDMAN -
You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.
GARY OLDMAN -
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 -
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 -
Growing up in a particular neighborhood, growing up in a working-class family, not having much money, all of those things fire you and can give you an edge, can give you an anger.
GARY OLDMAN -
It’s been said that alcoholics are egomaniacs with low self -esteem. It’s the prefect description. Being larger than life and yet your pride is crushed with self- loathing.
GARY OLDMAN -
To be able to do this job in the first place you’ve got to have a bit of an ego.
GARY OLDMAN -
I went and lived in Chicago for a year , and I studied at the police academy.
GARY OLDMAN -
I never told my father I loved him before he died, and I have a lot of issues about that. They’re all swimming around in my head, in my heart, unresolved, and in a way it felt fitting to dedicate the film to him.
GARY OLDMAN -
Well, I needed the work – that’s the honest answer. I haven’t worked for a while, a couple of years. So I thought it would be nice to get back to work and earn some money.
GARY OLDMAN -
But you see, I have played more good guys than I have played villains.
GARY OLDMAN -
You always hope that the cloak of inspiration will fall, and you’ll be O.K.
GARY OLDMAN -
My passion and energy get mistaken for anger.
GARY OLDMAN -
I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles’ faces on it. It would be a collector’s item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.
GARY OLDMAN -
I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father, and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up sometimes.
GARY OLDMAN -
You can play older than yourself. You can play younger than yourself up to a point, and then that just becomes impossible because you carry a weight with you that you can’t shift, unless you have very boyish looks.
GARY OLDMAN -
I wasn’t ever a huge fan of comics. Just not one of those kids, you know?
GARY OLDMAN -
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 -
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 -
The great thing about Google is that you type in neuro-surgery and somehow you end up with Peter Sellers or watching Frank Sinatra. Google is a great resource.
GARY OLDMAN -
Shakespeare doesn’t really write subtext, you play the subtext.
GARY OLDMAN -
Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you’re really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.
GARY OLDMAN -
Interesting things come your way but as you get older, your lifestyle changes. I don’t want to travel; I don’t want to be in a hotel room away from my family.
GARY OLDMAN -
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