Gary Oldman Quotes

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Gary Oldman

Profession : Actor

Birth : March 21, 1958

Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you're really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.

Gary Oldman

Being an actor is a good way to earn a living. And to meet fabulous people. It's great to live very comfortably. I've been lucky, I've had a lot of fun with great roles, but it is true that if I were extremely rich, I would stop and I would go to play football on a beach in the Caribbean with my children.

Gary Oldman

I'm almost incapable of lying. I'd be a terrible spy.

Gary Oldman

I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.

Gary Oldman

As a drama student I got into Thirties and Forties suits.

Gary Oldman

And costume is so important for an actor. It absolutely helps to get into character; it's the closest thing to you, it touches you. Some actors like to go into make-up and then put their clothes on, but I like to dress first; that's my routine.

Gary Oldman

I still don't have a publicist. If I'm in a film, you have an obligation to promote it, I'll do as much as I can.

Gary Oldman

On set I keep myself to myself; I'd rather the director speak up. I'm not gonna direct a younger actor. I think the power of example works best, actually.

Gary Oldman

It's a shame about California, and particularly about L.A., where they've demolished so many landmarks. It's a bit of a disease there, where if anything is over 30 years old, they sort of knock it down and replace it. It's a strange town, it's this sprawling suburb, and then there's a city, the old town.

Gary Oldman

I took a bit of a back seat, I had kids and I wanted to focus on them. There's that period in the late '90s, the early 2000s, where I didn't do a great deal.

Gary Oldman

That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.

Gary Oldman

I tend to read non-fiction.

Gary Oldman

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it's a constitution that's the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it's the most generous nation in the world.

Gary Oldman

Over the years, I have been asked to play these sort of scary frenetic characters that express their emotions physically.

Gary Oldman

The thing a drama school can't give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can't be taught, and you have to have intuition. It's an essential ingredient.

Gary Oldman

I like a cheese and pickle. Nice cheese and pickle on a real old-fashioned bread. Ploughman's lunch.

Gary Oldman

You can play older than yourself. You can play younger than yourself up to a point, and then that just becomes impossible because you carry a weight with you that you can't shift, unless you have very boyish looks.

Gary Oldman

You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.

Gary Oldman

I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That's the magic of it to me.

Gary Oldman

I just think political correctness is crap.

Gary Oldman