Why Gary Oldman changed his mind on the one movie he can’t bear: “It’s better than I think it is”
Like every other actor in the world, Gary Oldman has been in some awful movies. However, because he’s also recognised as one of his generation’s finest talents, the good drastically outweighs the bad.
Also, like many others in the profession, he doesn’t particularly like watching himself onscreen. That’s fair enough when he was there shooting the thing and doesn’t want to see any self-perceived mistakes he may or may not have made, but Oldman harbours a deep disdain for a couple of his most memorable turns.
1986’s Sid and Nancy was heralded as his breakthrough moment, and it was a performance that showcased his ferocious intensity and ability to disappear into a character. It remains among the upper echelons of his greatest work, but whenever he stumbles across it on TV, “Off it goes.”
Most folks familiar with Oldman’s filmography would say that Tiptoes was the nadir, and he’d probably agree. After all, he admitted he only made the tone-deaf and jaw-droppingly misguided dramatic comedy because he was a recently divorced single father in desperate need of money, which still doesn’t make it an entirely forgivable offence against cinema.
Frequently typecast as the villain, Oldman has shown himself capable of projecting quiet menace and simmering rage, although there’s always something to be said about his ability to ham it up for the cheap seats, devour the scenery whole, and spit it back out in a frenetic extravaganza of scene-stealing.
The first role that comes to mind on the latter count is Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, in which Oldman looks and sounds utterly ridiculous as Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, which is kind of the point. The divisive sci-fi blockbuster is one of the rare films to be nominated for both Academy Awards and Razzies, but almost 30 years on from its initial release, cult classic status was secured a long time ago.
The Oscar winner confessed that he’d only signed on for the picture because his Léon: The Professional director asked him to do it as a favour, and he toed the party line for three decades by saying he “can’t bear” to watch himself in it. Time tends to heal most wounds, though, with Oldman revealing that he’s finally starting to come around.
“Well, let’s put it this way, if I was watching it with my wife, we’d probably stick around,” he told Josh Horowitz. “And she has convinced me that it’s a better film than I think it is. All I take from that is I’m contaminated because I was the one who had that haircut, and I was the one who was wearing rubber. So, others can experience it in a different sort of way.”
Oldman copped to getting “a little triggered” whenever he catches a glimpse of The Fifth Element because it takes him “back to that place of Jean Paul Gaultier and rubber.” It’s been a long road to recovery, but he’s finally in a place where he can agree with what everyone else has known for a long time: it really is a much better film than he thinks it is.
