Actor Gary Oldman is happy for the first time in years. He has a 7-month-old son, a devoted wife (his third) and — at last — sobriety.
“That’s the biggest, hardest thing to do,” he shakes his head, tapping his finger on the table top, “the hardest thing I’ve ever done — more than anything.”
No one came to his rescue, he says. “It’s you and God, basically.”
Looking thinner, with spiky brown hair and a navy-blue sports coat over a grayish sweater, Oldman says, “Some bottoms are high, some are low. Sometimes people have to go to the gutter, lose everything before they can turn around and say, `I have a problem.’
“Others don’t have to go that far. I found one of the things that was sort of a curse was that I could do this job drunk, on a good day, a lot better than other people do it sober.”
That’s true. People who’ve worked with Oldman in movies like “Immortal Beloved,” “Air Force One” “JFK,” (in which he played Lee Harvey Oswald) and his latest, “Lost in Space,” say he’s simply a genius.
But genius isn’t enough when you’ve lost your passion for the work and life.
Oldman always managed his job, even when he was blotto. “You ask any director who’s ever worked with me and I’d bet a lot of money he’d say he’d work with me again. I turn up, I’m always on time, I know the lines.”
Still, he admits he had a tough time on “Scarlet Letter.” “I’ve never been shy of coming forward about that. But for someone who was falling down (drunk). . . . I don’t remember MAKING `Scarlet Letter,’ to be honest with you. I know I did it ’cause I’m in it. But I was living every day in Nova Scotia, up there in the middle of nowhere. You had a bad time for 90 minutes,” he laughs.
One of the things that helped revive his spirits was the autobiographical movie he wrote and directed, “Nil by Mouth.”
And though he was able to face that raw look at his own life through directing, acting is another thing.
After a long pause, he confides, “I’m looking for a role. I’ve neglected the acting somewhat and it’s time to kind of put it in the sun and give it some water. Since I took time to do `Nil by Mouth’ in the beginning of 1995, what role have I missed? What great parts were there for me to play? `As Good as It Gets?’ I’m too young. What great parts? . . . You know what I’m reading because they’re making them — dreadful movies, one after the other, homogenized, the status quo, in terrible shape.”
It’s not true, either, that a few brave filmmakers will take chances on independent films, he says. “These great people? It’s all acquisition, really. There’s no one out there writing checks for the development of scripts. They all want to watch it, and even if they like it, they want to know how it plays in festivals before they’ll give you any money for it. So all that (expletive)-independent stuff and what a great time the independents give is b.s. That’s the stuff that that awful magazine, Entertainment Weekly, that’s the propaganda they put out. So there’s just no parts.”
Well, that’s not exactly true. There are roles for Oldman, but they are always hyperventilating villains.
No more villains, he moans.
“I got a dreadful one — themoney they wanted to pay me! Even if you doubled it I could not get out of bed and do this. Last week alone I had four villains offered to me. So I put that completely to bed.”
This lack of vision defines the film business, he thinks. “It reflects also the people who are out there offering the roles. It’s their limited imagination as much as me. Obviously I say yes to these things at the end of the day. Nobody’s really bending my arm. To some extent they subsidized `Nil by Mouth.’ But you do forget why you wanted to do this thing in the first place. You know why you’re doing it, but it doesn’t make the doing of it any better.”
The last great role he had was in “Prick Up Your Ears,” he says, which was 11 years ago. “They don’t come around that often,” he says. “`Immortal Beloved’ (in which he played Beethoven) is a great role, a bit creaky here and there. But you kind of never get around it.”
What about “Air Force One”? He just gives a withering look.
So why did he agree to play the campy Dr. Zachary Smith in “Lost in Space,” this $80 million tribute to a cheesy little TV series which aired 30 years ago?
“This is the first movie I’ve made that my kid can go and see,” he explains. “My oldest is 9 and he’s coming out next week and I’m going to take him to Cinerama Dome, buy him some popcorn and watch the thing. He’s going to turn to me and say, `What’s going on?’ And I’ll say, `I haven’t the faintest idea.”‘
