The curious case of the fake Gary Oldman who fooled Hollywood: “Boy, do I have a strange story”
Having been cited as an inspiration and influence by countless actors, who are all immensely talented in their own right, it’s clear that quite a few thespians would love to be Gary Oldman.
Daniel Radcliffe, Christian Bale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt, and Tom Hardy are just a few of the stars who’ve worshipped at the altar of the Academy Award winner and his pain bag, but one unidentified prankster took things several steps further.
In the late 1990s, the leading role in the Andy Kaufman biopic, Man on the Moon, was being chased by several high-profile names. Edward Norton, John Cusack, Hank Azaria, and Kevin Spacey all either auditioned or screen-tested for the part, which was eventually filled by Jim Carrey, of course.
It’s hard to imagine anyone else headlining the biopic, mostly because the rubber-faced comic went to ridiculous lengths to get into character and stay there, with his method antics pissing a lot of people off. Oldman isn’t necessarily a method actor, but he is committed, and you could kind of see him playing it.
The most obvious roadblock was that he didn’t test for the picture, but that’s not what Hollywood thought. An impostor submitted a filmed audition as Oldman for Man in the Moon, which came after they’d phoned producer and co-star Danny DeVito, pretending to be Oldman, to ask about a script.
Refusing to let it go, the impersonator reached out to director Miloš Forman and casting director Francine Maisler, informing them that he’d fired his agents and needed to be contacted directly. “We got a call from Danny asking to confirm Danny’s London phone number,” the actual Oldman’s actual manager, Douglas Urbanski, recalled. “I said Gary didn’t call Danny, and he doesn’t live in London.”
Maisler admitted that she fell for it and “began having conversations with the man known as Gary Oldman.” The ruse was only truly rumbled when, in what must have been a cosmic coincidence, the genuine article struck up a conversation with Man on the Moon‘s co-writer Larry Karaszewski when their children were playing together.
“Gary Oldman, the real one, calls me at home last Friday and said, ‘Boy, do I have a strange story to tell you,'” Urbanski offered. “The writer kept talking about Gary’s screen test, and Gary finally said, ‘I didn’t do a screen test’. Then, they realised there was another guy pretending to be Gary.”
Despite being officially rumbled, the fake Oldman underlined their credentials as the ultimate chancer by asking for a part in the movie anyway, which they obviously didn’t get. There must have been something about their audition, though, seeing as it managed to fool so many industry veterans for so long.
