Gary Oldman’s valid excuse for making his worst-ever movie: “Desperate measures, desperate times”
For the most part, Gary Oldman is one of those actors who can always be relied on to give a performance that’s never anything less than solid, regardless of whether he’s doing it for love or money. Unfortunately, even the finest thespians of their generation have the occasional off-day.
The Academy Award-winner has never been too proud to admit that he’s taken the occasional job for the paycheque, but when those paycheque gigs came in Christopher Nolan’s influential Dark Knight trilogy and the monolithic and multi-billion dollar Harry Potter franchise, he wasn’t exactly slumming it.
Even when he’s hamming it up and chewing on the scenery as an exaggerated Russian villain in Air Force One, a megalomaniacal intergalactic zealot in The Fifth Element or delivering his most iconic line in Léon: The Professional for shits and giggles to try and make the crew laugh, Oldman rarely dips below 110%.
Plenty of celebrated stars who plied their trade in the theatre before taking their talents to Hollywood have blatantly sleepwalked their way through films that only exist to add some extra zeroes to their bank balances, but Oldman is so committed to his craft that he’s very rarely been caught going through the motions.
However, rules always have exceptions, and Matthew Bright’s utterly bizarre 2002 dramedy Tiptoes is by far the most egregious offender in his filmography. Casting Oldman as Matthew McConaughey’s twin brother isn’t even one of the ten weirdest things about it, with the future Academy Award winner playing a dwarf, an effect that’s achieved through practical effects, forced perspective, and, incredibly, kneeling down and shuffling around with a pair of shoes attached to his knees to make himself look smaller.
An abject and offensive slice of cinematic what-the-fuckery, Oldman made no bones about Tiptoes being the nadir of his professional life in an interview with Josh Horowitz, although he did explain what on earth convinced him to sign on for a picture he always knew would be burned at the critical stake.
“I’ll be very honest with you,” he said. “I had gone through a divorce and a nasty thing with a contractor. I ended up in California, in LA, at 42 years old, a single dad, and I was broke. And, ironically, I was living under the Hollywood sign, living in this rental. We had no furniture. Thank god for Ikea.”
“It was a bit of a rough time, and I needed to pay some bills, and I needed some money,” Oldman continued before sharing that he was backed into a performative corner by trying to emulate McConaghey’s distinctive burr because they were playing brothers, never mind the embarrassing camera tricks that were used to realise his turn as Rolfe Bedalia.
“Desperate measures, desperate times,” he concluded, summing up his involvement in Tiptoes to a tee. “And it was a crazy idea. But, would I do it now? No.” It’ll take some beating to be dethroned as Oldman’s most misjudged performance, but one major plus is that he seems to be in a comfortable enough financial position that he won’t be forced into making the same kind of mistake again.
