Gary Oldman’s favourite co-star of all time: “Nothing wrong with that”
There are a few A-list stars who haven’t had the opportunity to work with Gary Oldman, but the Oscar-winning actor has an unusual selection for his favourite co-star.
Gary Oldman is the type of brilliant actor who has risked being taken for granted because of how long he’s been appearing in hit movies. While young audiences might recognise him as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films, Commissioner Jim Gordon in The Dark Knight trilogy, or his Academy Award-winning performance as Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, it’s easy to forget that Oldman first role to prominence by appearing in small, British arthouse dramas like Sid & Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears.
One of the reasons that Oldman is so respected among actors is the consistency of his career; unlike many A-list stars who are highly selective in their choice of roles, Oldman has appeared in countless films and has one of the most elaborate IMDb pages when compared to his contemporaries. As a result, Oldman has had the chance to work with multiple generations of actors in a wide variety of projects.
While Oldman has always been well-regarded as an easy-to-work-with actor who has always been respectful of his fellow cast members, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a co-star that he’s been particularly fond of. According to Traversing the Stars, Oldman said that his all-time favourite was Kevin Bacon because he was “fun” and “he knew his lines”.
Bacon might be the only actor whose credits stack up against Oldman’s when considering just how many classics he’s appeared in; in fact, he had such a reputation for frequently working that the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” was created as a way of connecting actors through their co-stars. Although Bacon and Oldman both started their careers in the early 1980s and continue to be just as active today, they only shared the screen with one another twice in Criminal Law and Murder in the First, two twisty legal thrillers.
Criminal Law might’ve been the weaker of their two team-ups, at least according to the critics, but it landed at an interesting point in both of their careers. Bacon had already been labelled a heartthrob thanks to his charm in the coming-of-age hit Footloose, but he was clearly keen to stretch himself with more demanding roles. He definitely got the chance in Criminal Law, playing the black sheep of a wealthy family accused of murder. Opposite him, Oldman – still fresh to the American film scene – took on the role of a boozy defence lawyer brought in to represent him.
Criminal Law may have been dismissed as a trashier version of a courtroom thriller, but Bacon and Oldman got to reunite for a more prestigious entry in the genre with Murder in the First. Loosely based on a true story, Murder in the First cast Bacon as another accused criminal, albeit a more sympathetic one. Although it was Christian Slater who played his lawyer, Oldman had a scene-stealing role as the villainous warden of Alcatraz.
Murder in the First may not have been a smash hit, but it did earn Bacon an individual nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the SAG Awards.
Curiously, Bacon has somehow never even been nominated for an Oscar, which is surprising when looking at the many acclaimed films he’s been in. It did take Oldman quite a long time to get his first nomination and eventual win, so hopefully Bacon’s aren’t all that far away.
