Recently Gary Oldman landed on The Drew Barrymore Show and spoke on how The Dark Knight and Harry Potter film franchises “saved” him, and today, a new interview reveals more about his work on Harry Potter.
While the Harry Potter and The Dark Knight film franchises saved Gary Oldman’s career, in a recent interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, he pulled no punches when speaking about how he judges his acting. While the role of Sirius Black has risen to fan-favourite status since Oldman’s portrayal of the character back in 2004, Oldman himself was allegedly not pleased with his work. Fans can find the interview below, where Gary Oldman talks about a multitude of topics with Interviewer Josh Horowitz.
Gary Oldman explains his acting in the films was stifled by not allowing himself to read the books before his character portrayal. He claims, “I think my work is mediocre in it,” when referring to his role as Sirius Black, to the astonishment of Horowitz. “Maybe if I had read the books like Alan, if I had got ahead of the curve, if I had known what’s coming, I honestly think I would have played it differently,” he said, praising his late co-star, Alan Rickman’s role in the films as Severus Snape.
Gary Oldman then speaks further on this notion, explaining that “It’s like anything, I think if I sat and watched myself in something and said, ‘My God, I’m amazing,’ that would be a very sad day, because you want to make the next thing better.” Horowitz still praised Oldman for his role, lamenting the character’s early demise in the fifth film in the franchise with “I’m still upset about that.”
Oldman then explains how the cast and he had bets on who would ‘go’ first, with Oldman even remarking that back then, he put his money on Ronald Weasley as a potential ‘early exit.’ He said, “And then you kind of open the script, and you go, it’s me. I’m out of here.”
While Gary Oldman may have been wrong about who perishes early on in the Harry Potter films, his legacy is still readily available for fans to watch at their convenience. All eight of the films are available on Max, and even YouTube allows fans to rent each film. Fans can catch the rest of the interview from the official YouTube website, or watch just above.
