Making good

South Londoner Gary Oldman is known for playing a whole host of film villains. Here he talks to Anwar Brett about his latest roles as a Harry Potter hero and a Gotham City detective

Above: Gary Oldman

There are some actors who carry the weight of past roles around with them. Given that Gary Oldman has portrayed more than his share of unstable – and highly memorable – bad guys, this can make interviewing him a little daunting.

He played Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK, the suave vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the white Rastafarian drug dealer Drexl Spivey in True Romance. His movie career took flight with a pair of doomed real life characters, punk icon Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy and playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears. In the 20 years since the New Cross-born actor has transformed himself into a variety of different screen personae as well as delivering a highly personal, much acclaimed directorial debut with Nil By Mouth.

The film offered an account of tough working class family life, but while it was informed by some personal experience, Gary pointed out at the time of its release that it was not entirely autobiographical.

"Unfortunately I was misquoted at Cannes when someone asked me who I was most like in the movie," he said back in 1997. "I said I thought I was like the little girl, because I was quite a quiet shy boy, and I was happy. If you gave me pencils I was happy to sit in a room for nine hours and draw. I would watch the stuff going on, but what happened is they misread what I was saying and took it to mean that I watched my dad beat my mum up, which never happened.

"Some of the situations are the real thing, but I’m not a fly on the wall to know what was said. I’m blessed with a real good memory, and I’ll remember a conversation 15, 18, 20 years ago to what someone said. I just remembered something and then build the scene around it."

More recent performances as Sirius Black in the last three Harry Potter movies show a gentler, more paternalistic side to the actor and he is extremely grateful for that.

"It’s good to be anti-establishment and nice," he says during a break in filming Harry Potter & The Order Of The Phoenix, "because I tend to play anti-establishment and bad. It’s quite nice to do something like that. He’s reckless. I’ve mellowed with age but I know what that’s like. It’s a big gift to be able to do this, and I’m glad to have been part of it."

Another benefit is that Oldman has a few films to show the younger two of his three children who he admits were a little confused about their dad’s job.

"It is nice to be in stuff that they can see," he nods, "otherwise they have this image that Dad lives in a trailer. That’s where I work, you see, when they come and visit on the other movies I make they can’t really come to the set because it’s too scary. So they visit, and think I go off and live in a trailer. Now at least this contextualises it for them.

"They go, ‘Oh yeah, he goes off and does that.’ They’re very proud that I’m Sirius Black. Maybe in the old days you can imagine if your dad was Neil Armstrong: ‘My dad walked on the moon, he’s an astronaut.’ They can say, ‘My Dad’s Sirius Black!’ And it’s funny when I’m out with them people might stop me and say, ‘I like your work’ or ‘Can I have your autograph?’ something like that. My little one always says ‘Is that because you’re famous Dad?’ They’re very sweet."

Oldman has found another recurring role playing police Lieutenant Gordon in the Batman movies. The Dark Knight, which contains scenes filmed in Battersea Power Station, is due out in 2008 and is giving the 49-year-old a rare family-friendly period in his career. "It’s great innit, Harry Potter and Batman. My kids are in their element."

But the darker roles are never too far away; even Sirius has shadowy depths every bit as black as his surname suggests. "He’s unpredictable, Sirius. He lives life on the edge and he’s volatile."

It’s tempting to wonder if this description fits Gary Oldman now, though this benign and softly spoken man could not be further from that image. Certainly the role relies upon the edginess Gary brings to his work, which director David Yates drew upon in a key sequence in which duelling wizards fire carefully choreographed spells at each other.

"David told me he wanted it a bit more ‘street’," he smiles. "So I threw a bit of Streatham in there."

Gary’s thoughtful analysis of his character, and indeed this highly successful series of films, seems much the same as it would be on a highbrow art house movie as this pop culture phenomenon.

"It’s fiction but that doesn’t mean it’s froth. There’s a lot of very deep stuff in these books. It’s about relationships and family and loss and all of that, you know. I have an interesting line in this one to Harry, where I talk about how he’s been contaminated by the power of Voldemort. He says something like, ‘Maybe I’m becoming like him, and I’m becoming bad.’

"I say to him that he’s ‘a good person, and there’s dark and light in everyone. We have to make a choice, it’s up to us, which one we choose. That defines us. That says more about us, that’s who we really are.’ I think that is a great thing, I believe that. And that’s a great thing I think for kids to hear."

The old chestnut of never judging a book by its cover, or an actor by the character he plays, was never more true than in the case of Gary Oldman. But then it’s a lesson he has long since learned for himself.

"I was dragged to a strip club many years ago," he smiles, "and there was a woman up there sort of dancing like they do. Afterwards she came off stage and came up to me, leant down and said ‘You know, I really liked you in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.’"