Gary Oldman’s nine favourite actors of all time: “The Michelangelo of phone-acting”
Becoming a truly great actor is all about how well you can gather up roles. It’s all well and good to become a movie star; any handsome face can achieve that with enough charisma and a lucky break. But to be considered a truly world-beating, generation-defining actor, one must have a plethora of roles that one has not only delivered with aplomb but also been almost entirely lost in. British actor Gary Oldman has taken on a dizzying variety of roles.
From Sid Vicious to Winston Churchill, he’s captured the essence of his characters with the ease and accuracy of a master craftsman. He is one of the most well-regarded actors of his generation and has now even found himself with a knighthood in tow. He will undoubtedly be considered one of the heroes of British acting.
To find true inspiration in one’s hero is to be provided a goal to aim for. Here, Oldman names some of his acting heroes and explains how he still finds inspiration in their work.
Unlike a lot of his contemporaries, Oldman can provide a different view of the acting art form. Directing 1997’s Nil By Mouth, the actor is capable of seeing the wondrous talent of other actors from both sides of the camera. It makes his list of favourite actors all the more tantalising.
Shortly before the release of Darkest Hour, in which Oldman stars as wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, he sat down for a conversation with American musician Jack White for Interview Magazine. During their discussion, they talked a lot about authenticity, something Oldman has strived for throughout his career. To really get a feel of this character in Darkest Hour, for example, he insisted on smoking genuine Cuban cigars for the entire 48-day shoot, leaving him with a stomach ulcer and a $31,000 bill.
“I think it was my way out, a sort of avenue of escape,” Oldman said of acting. A working-class lad, having to scrap his way through the streets of South East London. The profession offered a seed of expression to plant and let flourish: “The fun of it was getting away from myself and stepping into the characteristics and the behaviour of someone else. It stems from that thing of not necessarily being that comfortable in your own skin.”
One of Oldman’s greatest skills is his ability to embody real people without crossing the line into impersonation. “I don’t study them,” he told White, revealing his approach to characterisation. “Impressionists have to paint with a very broad stroke because you’ve got to see it within a couple of seconds. You go, ‘That’s a really funny Robert De Niro,'” Oldman continued. “As an actor, though, you look at different aspects of a character. I try to completely surround myself with the assignment. It’s like being in a big cloud, and then some of it rains through.”
In the same way White has drawn inspiration from his favourite blues artists, Oldman has looked to his favourite actors for guidance. “I look at my heroes’ work,” he said. “Alan Bates, Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, and certainly character actors like Alec Guinness, who I admired enormously. But my taste is very wide. I love Cary Grant. I love the absolute simplicity of Gary Cooper. I also look at Newman and McQueen and even Redford. I mean, if you watch Redford in All the President’s Men [1976], it’s one of the greatest screen performances.”
So what is it about Redford the Londoner finds so inspiring? “It’s in the eyes,” he said. “He’s not travelling away from himself vocally or physically or doing all the pyrotechnics. There’s something about the psychology. I will always say this to students of acting—we talk about phone acting.”
Using All The Presidents Men as an example, Oldman explained how an actor’s skill is best demonstrated when they’re pretending to be on the phone with another character. “Often you’re not speaking to the other actor; someone is reading the lines in the room or you’re not even getting any of the feed,” he said. “There are people who are very good at it and people who are not good at it. In All the President’s Men, there is one take of Redford switching phones, talking to different people; it’s about six or seven minutes long. Very, very slow push in on Redford. And I would say to students, ‘You want to see phone acting? That is the Michelangelo of phone acting.’”
Gary Oldman’s favourite actors:
- Alan Bates
- Tom Courtenay
- Albert Finney
- Alec Guinness
- Cary Grant
- Gary Cooper
- Paul Newman
- Steve McQueen
- Robert Redford
