Gary Oldman (1958- )
8x10 Color In Person signed portrait as 'Dr. Smith' in the film version of 'Lost In Space'. His Salary for Lost in Space (1998) was $5,000,000
Gary Oldman usually plays characters that are borderline psychotics. Also known for playing roles that often require a variety of different accents and has used a different speaking voice (i.e. accent) in practically every movie he's ever been in.
He was awarded the 1985 London Critics Circle Theatre Award (Drama Theatre Award) for Best Actor for his performance in The Pope's Wedding.
His film Nil by Mouth (1997) is loosely based upon his own life growing up in London.
Was offered the role of General Grievous in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005), and he accepted the role. However, he later declined the role after complications arose during contract negotiations.
A Personal Quote "Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play - unless they're clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic - is bullshitting you."
"I had this idea of myself as a shy, kind, sweet chap. I was working with Winona Ryder and she turned to me and said, 'Fuck, man, you're really intense.' I was so shocked, I went, 'What do you mean? I'm not intense, I'm sweet.' My passion and energy get mistaken for anger."
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:
Sid Vicious. Lee Harvey Oswald. Dracula. There's no one this young British actor can't play convincingly. After making a shattering impression on the British stage, he galvanized film audiences as doomed, frantic punk rocker Sid Vicious in 1986's Sid and Nancy It was a performance so harrowingly good that it didn't seem to be a performance at all, but reality itself. (His earlier credits include Mike Leigh's 1983 telefilm Meantime) The auburn-haired, pockmarked Oldman then transformed himself into the far more articulate but equally tormented gay British playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987). After an enigmatic turn in Nicolas Roeg's inaccessible Track 29 (1988), Oldman played an American lawyer in 1989's Criminal Law (losing his British accent completely), an institutionalized Korean War vet in the little-seen Chattahoochee and the easily addled Rosencrantz in Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (both 1990). After an intense performance in the crime drama State of Grace and an appearance in Heading Home (both also 1990), Oldman went on to play Lee Harvey Oswald in the mosaic of flashbacks in Oliver Stone's controversial JFK (1991), which was likely seen by more American moviegoers than all his other films combined! How do you follow a part like that? By assuming the title role in Francis Ford Coppola's highly eroticized version of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), of course, decked out in elaborate period costumes, smothered in heavy makeup, and sporting a thick, almost impenetrable accent. Since then he's appeared in True Romance (1993, with a mane of dreadlocks, as a Chicago drug dealer), Romeo Is Bleeding, The Professional, Immortal Beloved (all 1994, in the last named as Beethoven), Murder in the First and The Scarlet Letter (both 1995, in the latter as Arthur Dimmesdale). He was married to actress Uma Thurman.
Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin
