A career in three acts: The movies that define Gary Oldman
Before his portrayal of Jackson Lamb in the award-winning AppleTV+ spy-thriller series Slow Horses, Gary Oldman has been steadily supplying audiences with transformative portrayals of punks, psychopaths, vampires, and prime ministers and has been determined to be unbound by genre.
Just as at home in a gritty action-thriller, like 1994’s Léon: The Professional, as he is in high-concept science fiction, such as The Fifth Element, Oldman doesn’t allow himself to be held down by tone or by type, instead carving a career that is stacked with emotion, comedy, gravitas and heart in equal measure.
With various awards and accolades, including an Academy Award to his name, Oldman has cemented for himself an incomparable legacy that has established him as one of the finest actors in the history of cinema. “I don’t go to premieres,” he once said. “I don’t go to parties. I don’t covet the Oscar. I don’t want any of that. I don’t go out. I just have dinner at home every night with my kids. Being famous, that’s a whole other career. And I haven’t got any energy for it,” he added, in what typifies his approach to the world of Hollywood and all the baggage that comes with it.
That dedication has always guaranteed that whenever Oldman has approached a role, he has done so with the utmost respect. As we take a look back at the over 40 years of work given to us by Oldman, we’ve identified three films that give us true insight into the scope of the actor’s ability.
The three movies that define Gary Oldman:
Sid and Nancy (Alex Cox, 1986)
Oldman’s first role to gain him the interest that would persist over the course of his career, his portrayal of Sid Vicious, bassist in the landmark punk band the Sex Pistols, is lauded as visceral and energetic, held in high regard for its juxtaposing portrayal of vulnerability and unashamed violence. Oldman turned down the role twice, after being offered the part in place of the director Alex Cox’s initial consideration of Daniel Day-Lewis was put to bed after seeing Oldman in 1984’s The Pope’s Wedding. Oldman would go on a fierce diet to drop his weight in order to play the late punk icon, ending up in hospital after losing too much.
Despite the cult following and acclaim the film still garners over 30 years on, Oldman is quoted as saying that he doesn’t believe he played the role well. A statement that goes in direct opposition to most reviews of his talents in the film, including Roger Ebert’s claim that despite Oldman not being nominated for an Academy Award for Sid and Nancy, “he should be.”
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
Following in the footsteps of iconic performances from Béla Lugosi and Sir Christopher Lee, Oldman was cast as the titular vampire in Francis Ford Coppola’s rendition of the famous gothic novel.
Taking a distinctly different tone and aesthetic to previous iterations, Coppola’s Dracula is shown in various forms throughout the film, allowing Oldman to convey multiple dimensions of the vampiric count, from a young, handsome form through to a decrepit, inhuman looking (although neatly coiffed) guise that truly saw Oldman’s transformative acting ability to shine through.
In spite of needing to fill the shoes of perhaps the most defining portrayals of one of the most famous villains in popular media, Oldman manages to cement himself as worthy of being mentioned in the same vein as Lugosi and Lee, by giving the audience a wholly unique performance as Dracula, and helped usher in a new era of mythology and tropes surrounding the story.
Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, 2017)
Oldman would finally see his talents recognised by the Academy Awards with his once again transformative portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, a film that telegraphs Churchill’s premiership through the outbreak and early months of the Second World War. It’s a film that sees Oldman wholly unrecognisable under layers of award-winning prosthetics and a performance that sees the actor lost in one of the most celebrated performances of a historical figure ever put to film.
Churchill has been portrayed, in varying degrees of success by more than 60 actors, however it’s Oldman’s performance that elevates his performance of the famed Prime Minister out of stuffy biographical history to the heights of a truly fascinating character study on one of the most recognisable Briton’s to ever have lived.
Gary Oldman is likely one of the most fascinating actors working today. His range, adaptability, and often daring performances electrify the projects he is involved in and more often than not leave his characters as the more memorable ones in even the more forgettable of his filmography. It’s perhaps impossible to truly define an actor who defies definition and shifts, chameleon-like, with each performance.
We, as audiences, should be forever grateful for his scope, determination, and dedication to crafting compelling stories. It’s certain that without his unwavering talent, the landscape of cinema today would look very different.
