Gary Oldman discusses the most difficult directors in cinema history: “It’s not very actor-friendly”
Gary Oldman is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time for numerous reasons, with one of the most prominent being his remarkable versatility. Throughout his career, he has skillfully avoided typecasting, transforming himself so thoroughly for each role that, beneath the prosthetics and makeup, it’s often hard to believe it’s him—unless, of course, his name is on the poster.
Not only has he taken on the enigmatic role of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, but he has also been in charge of Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy. The actor has also been both a wild and uncontrollable villain on numerous occasions, in Fifth Element and True Romance, but also acted as the hero in the Dark Knight trilogy as Commissioner Gordon and George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Naturally, this diversified role call has exposed him to more genres and directors than most. Thus, he is in a unique position to offer his thoughts on the often loggerheads relationships between actors and directors.
When appearing on SiriusXM’s Opie & Anthony show, the star discussed working alongside Luc Besson, who he made Leon: The Professional, one of the greatest action movies of all time. “Yeah, he likes to tell you things,” he said of Besson’s directorial style. He then discussed how Besson spent the first few days on set tirelessly telling Oldman every detail of his character. “It’s not very actor-friendly,” Oldman remarked, “Just let me do my thing.”
He then continued to regale those in the studio with an industry tale of how Harvey Keitel was originally cast as Victor Ziegler before he quit, and the role was passed down to Sydney Pollack. It was Stanley Kubrick’s last film, at which point his unique ways of operating were firmly established, and for Keitel, they evidently proved too much to handle.
“Originally Harvey Keitel was in Eyes Wide Shut,” Oldman began, “He was playing Sydney [Pollack’s role]. He was doing the scene and they were just walking through a door and after the 68th take of this, just walking through a door, Harvey Keitel just said ‘I’m out of here, you’re fucking crazy’. He just said, ‘you’re fucking out of your mind’, and left.”
Kubrick’s style at this stage was to remain very reticent as a director and to wait for the right shot to land in the can. To achieve this, he ran his sets with an iron fist, famously working with smaller support crews than any other director so that every penny and effort went into what appeared on screen and not extraneous factors, like large catering crews or someone to hold his coffee.
However, such extreme focus and little communication evidently tested some actor’s patience. While Oldman never worked with Kubrick himself, the story gave him a gleaning insight into what it might have been like. “He would just say do it again,” he continued. “I don’t know whether he was looking for something very specific and he wasn’t going to tell you? I mean I love Kubrick’s films, but I don’t know how I would’ve worked with that.”
Famously, on this front, Kubrick once declared that he didn’t know what he was looking for until he saw it. Interestingly, although Oldman declared that he didn’t know how he would work with such direction, he has subsequently worked with David Fincher on Mank—Fincher is another director who is fond of endlessly repeated takes, and the result was an Oscar nomination.
However, perhaps suggesting that Oldman is more of a fan of a hands-off approach, the actor once proclaimed his favourite piece of direction as an almost-mono-syllabic piece of advice he received from acclaimed director Christopher Nolan. “Chris [Nolan] is not a big note giver, and I did a scene once in Batman, and he came up to me,” Oldman explained to an interviewer, “It was probably one of two notes he ever gave me in seven years. He came up to me, and he said ‘Let’s do that one more time. There’s more at stake’, and I went ‘Yep got it'”.
Oldman’s career is one of the most wanted in Hollywood, but while he can’t boast to share a credit with the legendary director he proclaimed to be a difficult taskmaster, there’s a good chance if he did, he wouldn’t have enjoyed the experience.
