At the end of 2022, I found myself constantly asked if I had seen the series Slow Horses starring Gary Oldman. Now, his is a name that grabs my attention, so I made a mental ‘note to self’ to track it down. Only, I found it was on Apple TV and well, me and Mrs Bax are so old school we didn’t have a telly that could download the channel, or any streaming channel for that matter.

That all changed last Xmas, when we finally upgraded and we now have more channels than you could ever watch in 30 lifetimes, but I digress. Once we had the new kit up and running, we pretty much dived in on straight on Slow Horses and I’m delighted to say we weren’t disappointed. On offer was some very clever writing and fine performances. None more so than Oldman, as Jackson Lamb, a somewhat disgraced MI5 agent, with holes in his socks. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised I loved it.  I’ve long admired the work of Oldman and when you look at the sheer variety of his roles over the years, from Sid Vicious to Joe Orton to Winston Churchill, he has laid down a remarkable career.

He was born in the deep South, New Cross, in and around Hatcham Park Road, in March 1958. Named Gary Leonard Oldman, he is the son of Leonard , a one-time engineer in the navy and then welder and his wife Kathleen. He has an older sister Maureen, better known as the actress Laila Morse, best known for her role as Mo in EastEnders. Gary played the piano as a kid, but switched potential careers after seeing Malcolm McDowell in The Raging Moon on TV in 1971

‘Something about Malcolm just arrested me, and I connected, and I said, “I wanna do that.”’

He supported Millwall as a youngster and then learned later that his mum once ran a boarding house for Millwall players and that his dad had played once or twice for the first team. This has absolutely nothing to do with me liking his work, but it certainly helps.

After leaving West Greenwich school aged 16, he performed at the Young Peoples Theatre in Greenwich, whilst working in various jobs, such as in a sports shops in Peckham and as a porter in a hospital. He tried out for RADA, but failed to get in, being advised he should do something else for a living.  Nice.

After failing at RADA, he picked up a scholarship at the Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, where Oldman studied the teachings of, among others, Konstantin Stanislavski and Stella Adler, but also drew a lot of inspiration from American cinema, John Cassavetes being a favourite. He graduated in 1979 with a BA in acting.

He found work in the theatre pretty quickly upon leaving , working in a wide number of different roles, first around the UK and then later in Europe and South America. After a six-month run in the West End performing with Glenda Jackson in 1982, he picked up the role of Coxy the skinhead in Mike Leigh’s fantastic Meantime.

His work was getting him noticed and won Time Out Awards as Best Newcomer and Best Actor in 1984 for his work as Scopey in The Popes Wedding at The Royal Court Theatre. He then became a member of the Royal Shakespeare company for a year from 1985.

In 1986, after much persuading, he finally agreed to play Sid Vicious in Alex Cox’s film Sid and Nancy.

“I wasn’t really that interested in Sid Vicious and the punk movement. I’d never followed it. It wasn’t something that interested me. The script I felt was banal and ‘who cares’ and ‘why bother’ and all of that. And I was a little bit sort-of with my nose in the air and sort-of thinking ‘well the theatre—so much more superior’ and all of that.’ His agent, and the salary being offered, eventually got him to play the part. In the film, Oldman sang many of the musical numbers himself, working alongside original Sex Pistol Glen Matlock.

He then played Joe Orton opposite Alfred Molina in Prick Up Your Ears , based on the biography of Orton written book by John Lahr in 1987. US film critic Roger Ebert was very taken with Oldman’s work in these films.

‘There is no point of similarity between the two performances; like a few gifted actors, [Oldman] is able to re-invent himself for every role. On the basis of these two movies, he is the best young British actor around.’

1989 saw him turn in a tremendous performance  role as Bex in the football hooligan-based TV drama The Firm directed by Alan Clarke, which brought him to the attention of the nation’s telly watchers.

1990 saw him in  Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, the film adaptation of Tom Stoppard’s play of the same name and in the same year, he starred alongside Ed Harris and  Sean Penn in State of Grace. Oldman then moved to the US and has resided there ever since.

In 1991, he was Lee Harvey Oswald in the Oliver Stone three hour epic JFK and Count Dracula in Bram Stokers Dracula directed by Francis Ford Copolla which became a box office hit . 1993 saw him as Drexl Spivey in True Romance written by Quentin Tarrantino, and 1994 saw him in Leon : The Professional as Norman Stansfield.

The highlight for me, among all of his work, came in 1997 and is ironically one film in which he didn’t appear in, namely Nil by Mouth. Instead Oldman wrote, produced and  directed the film. It is very powerful work, weaving elements of his own real life, like his own fathers’ descent into alcoholism, which saw him leave his family when Gary was 7, in among many fictional scenes.

‘A lot of this film is my father. I had to leave a lot of things out of the film because they were too horrendous. People wouldn’t have believed it.’

As a native Londoner and from the South side myself, I can say confidently, he captured the area and some of those on its manor, authentically. In fact, I remember seeing it at the cinema and chuckling to myself watching it, horrifying those I was with, who were struggling with the violence they were seeing onscreen.  In my defence, I explained that it  was so true to life, that I was smiling at its accuracy.

Ray Winstone –‘I’d briefly met Gary Oldman at film-maker Alan Clarke’s funeral in 1990 and later received a message saying he wanted to see me. We met on the steps of the Royal Court theatre in London, where I was working. With a coffee in hand, he told me all about this incredible piece of work he’d written, and how much he’d like me to do it. What a compliment that was, coming from someone like Gary Oldman. 

We had plenty of time to rehearse and get a feel for how the dialogue would flow. By the time we came to filming, everyone was on page. We all gelled. There was plenty of swearing, but that was the language of people who don’t know how to express themselves any other way. There’s a million ways to say the word “cunt” too. It can be a term of endearment: “Don’t be a silly cunt.” It’s part of the English language, part of the language of the people Gary had written about.

Gary was probably the best director I’ve ever worked with on that kind of subject. It was tough, but I remember it as a joy. We knew we’d made the film we wanted to make, but that didn’t necessarily mean it would be successful or well liked. But from the opening night, the reception was phenomenal. It went beyond our expectations, with Kathy winning best actress in the Independent film awards and getting nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes. The film’s a tough watch, perhaps not one for Saturday night with a pizza, but I think it stands the test of time. And that’s the genius of Gary Oldman.’

Gary Oldman – ‘I felt the London I’d known growing up had never been represented. Things happened in my family that were shocking, so I felt a nudge to tell my own story. I was in New York. I got out my notebook and started writing. Originally, I thought it would all centre on Billy (the drug addict played by Charlie Creed Miles) but then these other characters came in. I had the urge to get behind the camera and continued writing whenever I could, in the trailer, on the plane. The first draft was completed in three or four weeks.
We couldn’t raise a penny, but then my producing partner, Douglas Urbanski, had lunch with the film-maker Luc Besson, who I’d done Léon with. Without hesitation, Luc said: “Of course I’ll finance Gary’s film.” He raised £1.9m, but the film eventually cost £4m, which I funded myself. I was divorced and not living a particularly extravagant lifestyle, not collecting art or driving a Ferrari, although you might say putting my money into a film was frivolous.
I admired Ray, but didn’t know him personally, so we met for lunch at the Royal Court. He was my first choice, so it was wonderful to secure him. Kathy, I contacted through her agent. My casting director set up weekly improvisation classes to find the younger kids, which is where we found Charlie Creed-Miles, who had real energy and charisma. We rehearsed and rehearsed. I didn’t want the dialogue to sound your turn, my turn, so I said: “I want you to interrupt each other, talk over each other and ad lib.” There were a few crackers.’

My good friend, actor-writer Johnny Harris, has often told me seeing Nil by Mouth was the real start of his acting aspirations . Fellow actor Stephen Graham, studied acting at Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, purely because Oldman attended the same place.

Elsewhere in 1997, Oldman appeared in Fifth Element directed by Luc Besson and in Air Force One. He played Mason Verger in Hannibal in 2001, who manages to survive a Hannibal Lecter attack. He then popped up in the Harry Potter franchise in 2004 as Sirius Black, and in 2008 and again in 2012, he played James Gordon in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight respectively.

Film critic Mark Kermode -, ‘The best performance in the film, by a mile, is [by] Gary Oldman. It would be lovely to see him get an Oscar nomination because actually, he’s the guy who gets kind of overlooked in all of this.’

2011 saw him as George Smiley in a role ‘where the silence is loud’ – namely Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , based on the John Le Carre novel, and directed by Tomas Alfredson. The role went on to earn him nominations as for both an Oscar and a Bafta.

Then 2017, he put in an astonishing performance as Winston Churchill in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour . It was actually hard to recognise him under the make-up consisting of 14 pound of silicone rubber, that transformed him into the war time leader . It was a part that was rightly recognised by those who judge these things, and he won the Best Actor Oscar and Bafta, as well as a Golden Globe.

‘I have a relatively good ear and can do a few impressions of people. I don’t study them, but I think what happens with an impressionist is that they’re looking at one particular source. Impressionists have to paint with a very broad stroke because you’ve got to see it within a couple of seconds. As an actor, though, you look at different aspects of a character. I try to completely surround myself with the assignment. It’s like being in a big cloud and then some of it rains through—for instance, looking at not only [Winston] Churchill’s way of walking and mannerisms and the way he sounds, but also looking into the psychology.’

One of his latest film roles came on 2020, which saw him as Herman J Mankiewicz, in Mank, the man who co-wrote Citizen Kane alongside Orson Welles.

Oldman’s personal life, has seen struggles with alcoholism, and he has hailed Alcoholics Anonymous has helping him beat the illness. He has been sober since 1997.

‘It’s like a three-headed dragon, it attacks you spiritually, emotionally and physically. It likes to claim people. And I was just sick and tired. I knew that I was going to die, but there were things I still wanted to accomplish. I have alcoholism, so it’s hereditary. I saw him (his father)  briefly once or twice in that period before he died (aged 62 of liver failure) so I have an image of him as someone old, who was dying. I don’t like remembering that.’

He has also been married five times. First to Lesley Manville in 1987, having a son Alfie, who has presented them both with grand children in recent years. His second wife was actress Uma Thurman. Then there was  Donya Fiorentino with whom he had two sons, Gulliver and Charlie. Divorce followed.

‘I woke up one day and was 43 years old and I was a single dad and had these two kids. It wasn’t exactly what I’d planned, but there it was in front of me. So, I just made a decision to be at home more. (Certain films ) allowed me, certainly financially, to really be at home with the kids. You make a Harry Potter movie for six weeks… and then you have maybe seven months at home. If one can do the smallest amount of work for the most possible money, that seems smart.’

He then married Alexandra Edenborough and then in 2017, he married Gisele Schmidt.

‘Look, relationships are very, very hard. They just are. I mean, four times! I’m not proud to say it. One of them was for 10 minutes. I don’t think it meant very much to either of us.’

And so back to where we started, namely Slow Horses. He is currently making series 3 and 4 back-to-back, and then what? He has stated that the series would likely be his last role, as he intended to retire from acting once filming has ended. 

Financially, I think he should be ok . His films have grossed over $11 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time. Not bad for a kid from SE14.

Last word to the man himself

‘As an actor, you people-watch, you observe. And the more famous you become; the sad thing is you lose the ability to do that. Instead of people-watching, you become the focus of attention. I’ve had an enviable career, but careers wain, and I do have other things that interest me outside of acting. When you’re young you think you’re going to get round to doing all of them – read that book, etc. – then the years go by.’

 

The Mumper of SE5

Read The Mumper’s other weekly musings on ‘The Speakeasy’ blog page

 

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