The greatest direction Christopher Nolan ever gave Gary Oldman
Throughout his storied career, Gary Oldman has worked with a number of visionary directors, including Francis Ford Coppola, Oliver Stone, David Fincher, and both Tony and Ridley Scott. In the 2000s, his most notable collaboration has been with Christopher Nolan, having starred in Nolan’s blockbuster Batman trilogy, as well as making a memorable cameo in Oppenheimer.
Over the years, Oldman has never been shy about offering his opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of directors he’s worked with – sometimes in the same breath. For instance, when asked about playing Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK for the legendary Oliver Stone, he told The Hollywood Interview, “He’s a force of nature. Brilliant. Self-destructive. He might want to watch that; curb that a bit. Great vision. Angry. Good. He’s good. His energy is just enviable. A powerhouse. I had a great time working with him.”
As for Luc Besson, the maverick French filmmaker he worked with on Leon: The Professional and The Fifth Element, Oldman was less complimentary. During an appearance on SiriusXM’s Opie & Anthony show, he revealed that Besson has a tendency to overload actors with information about their characters at the start of a shoot. He admitted, “It’s not very actor-friendly. Just let me do my thing.“
Overloading an actor with unnecessary backstory isn’t something Oldman would ever accuse Nolan of, though. In fact, the star revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that Nolan is more the type to leave his actors to their own devices and will only step in with succinct pieces of direction if he really needs to.
Oldman told host Josh Horowitz: “I’ll give you an example of a really fantastic piece of direction. I did seven years for Chris Nolan on the three Batmans. Chris is not a big note giver, he does leave you alone. He expects you to do your work, come in, and, ‘You do your work, I’m gonna do my work,’ so he does tend to leave you alone. He’s not one for small talk.”
Oldman revealed that, during a scene on one of the Batman films, Nolan gave him one of only two notes he ever relayed in their years of collaboration. The Slow Horses star explained, “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, all right, let’s do one more. I know what you mean.'”
To Oldman, that brief yet incisive piece of direction was all he needed to know exactly what Nolan wanted from the scene – and what he needed to change about his performance in order to deliver it. He explained, “I don’t need to know the ins and outs of the whole universe; I just need that nudge. And then you go, ‘Oh, he just wants me to turn it up. I just need to adjust the volume on it.’ Not vocally, but the energy or the dynamic of it.”
