A dark hour: The Oscar-winning role Gary Oldman poisoned himself for
Sometimes, actors go above and beyond to achieve success, embodying their roles a little too realistically. Of course, when prestigious prizes such as Oscars or Golden Globes are on offer – and the whole world is watching you – there’s immense pressure to be as good as you can possibly be.
Gary Oldman has always expressed extreme acting talent from the get-go. Some of his earliest roles include the perpetually out-of-it skinhead Coxy in Mike Leigh’s Meantime and the controversial punk icon Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy. Demonstrating the ability to play incredibly complex and often troubled characters, it didn’t take Oldman long to transition to Hollywood, starring in popular movies such as Leon: The Professional and True Romance during the 1990s.
However, Oldman reached a new level of acclaim when he starred in Darkest Hour in 2017, playing arguably the most famous British Prime Minister of all time, Sir Winston Churchill. Directed by Joe Wright, known for movies such as Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, the film charts Churchill’s rise to power after succeeding Neville Chamberlain and his subsequent involvement with the politics of the Second World War.
When you look at Oldman out of character, it is hard to picture him playing anyone remotely resembling the chain-smoking, overweight, balding politician, but Wright clearly knew the actor was right for the role.
Oldman’s dedication to the part was impressive – he donned lots of prosthetics to help better resemble Churchill, which took hours to apply every single day. The actor wasn’t doing anything by halves, and he even decided to smoke the politician’s favourite cigars, Romeo y Julieta Cubans, during filming in order to totally embody the character.
Yet, this resulted in some rather nasty side effects for Oldman, who smoked around 400 cigars during filming, all in rather quick succession. After consuming over $20,000 worth of smokes, he ended up with “serious nicotine poisoning,” although he didn’t seem to mind too much.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Oldman explained, “You’d have a cigar that was three-quarters smoked and you’d light it up, and then over the course of a couple of takes, it would go down, and then the prop man would replenish me with a new cigar — we were doing that for 10 or 12 takes a scene.”
Luckily, Oldman recovered just fine, and he ended up beating off rivals such as Daniel Day-Lewis and Timothée Chalamet to win ‘Best Actor’ at the Academy Awards. Oldman’s performance as Churchill was undoubtedly astounding, and his efforts to portray a character starkly different from him were highly commendable.
