Born in London on March 21, 1958, Gary Oldman (65) is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors of his generation. The star will soon be giving up his long and distinguished career, as he himself explained to the “London Times” last year. “I don’t want to be active when I’m 80,” said Oldman, who celebrates his 65th birthday today.
The acting chameleon added, “I’ve had an enviable career, but careers are dwindling and I have other things that interest me outside of acting.” Oldman fans don’t have to despair immediately, however, because the fascinating actor can still be seen in the agent series “Slow Horses – A Case for Jackson Lamb” on the Apple TV streaming service.
The “Slough House” book series by template author Mick Herron (59) has a total of seven entries. The streaming service Apple TV has already ordered a third and fourth season of “Slow Horses”. So, given the book, Oldman could go on playing main character Jackson Lamb for quite some time, a – as the star himself put it – a “rough, farting, drinking, smoking, non-politically correct, overweight, ill-dressed” man with “greasy hair and bad teeth.” .
“He’s great,” Oldman says of what may be his final role.
Oldman is a child of the British working class. The father was an alcoholic and left the family early. After a difficult start to his career – he worked as a shoe seller and in a slaughterhouse to finance his acting studies – Oldman established himself as a theater actor and was a member of the renowned Royal Shakespeare Company for a year from 1985.
Oldman rose to stardom as punk legend Sid Vicious (1957-1979) in the cult biopic “Sid
The villains he often embodied, Oldman once told the New York Times, would “burn from the first bar, they’re like rock ‘n’ roll.”
After moving to the United States in the early 1990s, Oldman took part in a whole series of wonderful film projects such as “State of Grace” (German title: “Im Vorhof der Hölle”, 1990), “JFK: Tatort Dallas” (1991) , “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992) or “True Romance” (1993).
Oldman’s most well-known roles from the nineties are probably those of the drug-addicted DEA agent Norman Stansfield from Luc Besson’s (63) classic film “Léon – Der Profi” (1994) and the villain Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg from Besson’s brilliant sci-fi Fireworks “The Fifth Element” (1997). Especially the embodiment of the last two mentioned villains seemed to be downright thieving fun for the actor, who is also known for his overacting.
Oldman, who has been married five times, keeps his private life out of the press as much as possible – and is therefore rather untypical for Hollywood. Among other things, he was married to Uma Thurman (52) from 1990 to 1992 and brought three children into the world.
Alongside this, Oldman waged a long battle with alcoholism. “I used to sweat out vodka,” the star revealed to the Los Angeles Times, adding, “While I was drinking, I was working and I could remember my lines of dialogue, so I felt like I could get away with it, but deep in inside me, under the disbelief, I knew about it”.
By his own admission, Oldman has been sober since 1997.
In the 2000s, Oldman was increasingly seen in franchises and big Hollywood blockbusters. He embodied the character Sirius Black in a total of four “Harry Potter” films from 2004 to 2011, and played Commissioner Gordon in the “Dark Knight” trilogy by master director Christopher Nolan (52), which was released between 2005 and 2012.
Oldman was nominated for an Oscar for the first time in 2012 for his portrayal of the main character George Smiley in the spy film masterpiece Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. In retrospect, the decades-long non-consideration by the Oscar Academy is almost a scandal and seems “incomprehensible”, as Oldman’s compatriot and fellow actor Colin Firth (62) found. “I think he should have won seven times by now,” Firth said in 2011.
In 2018 it finally worked out with the longed-for Oscar. Oldman won Best Actor for his portrayal of Winston Churchill (1874-1965) in The Darkest Hour. Another – again unsuccessful – nomination followed in 2021 for the Netflix film “Mank” by David Fincher (60), which is well worth seeing, in which Oldman and Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897-1953) played the heavily drinking screenwriter of “Citizen Kane”. plays.
