Why Gary Oldman completely gave up on directing: “I don’t want to work like that”
Many directors only make one movie during their lifetimes, teasing a career that could’ve seen them rise to become one of the greatest filmmakers of their generation.
Instead, they become a ‘what could’ve been’ story, leaving fans to wonder what other cinematic delights they might’ve produced if they kept making films. Look at Charles Laughton, for example, the actor who proved his brilliance as a filmmaker with 1955’s The Night of the Hunter, only to never make another movie – at least behind the camera. Then there’s Barbara Loden, whose feminist drama Wanda is a truly devastating masterpiece, yet she never helmed any other movies, sadly dying just ten years after the movie’s release.
Gary Oldman followed in the footsteps of the aforementioned filmmakers in 1997 when he temporarily ditched acting to write and direct a movie instead. He proved to be incredibly well-equipped to helm a film, with Nil By Mouth receiving widespread acclaim. The movie saw Kathy Burke and Ray Winstone appear as a couple whose life is marred by addiction and abuse, and Oldman looked to British social realism as his most significant source of inspiration, telling Film Scouts, “I don’t know if there could be a Nil by Mouth without people like Tony Richardson, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh.”
Despite the acclaim the film received, Oldman has since gone back to acting, leaving fans to wonder why he hasn’t got around to directing another movie. Sure, he’s been busy winning Oscars and leading the revered television show Slow Horses, but could he not find time to squeeze in another gritty drama? Well, it turns out Oldman actually has tried to helm various other projects in the meantime, but funding has been tight, and if there’s one thing he has learned from being an actor, it’s how easily factors out of their control can ruin a director’s vision.
Oldman doesn’t want to compromise any of his ideas, so he has decided to step away from potential directorial projects and continue acting instead. Talking to theartsdesk.com, Oldman once revealed that following Nil By Mouth, “I worked for a long time on adapting a book by Darin Strauss called Chang and Eng, a wonderful epic about Siamese twins, but it never came to fruition. I couldn’t finance it.”
He continued, “And my current project, Flying Horse, about the photographer Eadweard Muybridge and the early days of cinema, is also on hold because we don’t have the necessary funds. $30million – I don’t have that kind of money.” The actor knows how disastrously films can go when issues of money get in the way, and altering his ideas for the sake of a budget just doesn’t work for him.
“I’m lucky enough to be able to earn a living as an actor. I don’t have to direct films at all costs. I’ve seen too often what happens when the budget suddenly gets tight. They tear pages out of the script and change the story – rarely for the better. I don’t want to work like that,” he concluded.
