Gary Oldman and how the ‘Slow Horses’ star found his calling in Malcolm McDowell’s ‘The Raging Moon’ performance – the film that lit my fuse

Considering Gary Oldman’s impressive string of performances since his breakthrough as punk rocker Sid Vicious? Sid and NancyIt’s hard to believe he was only nominated for an Oscar once before winning for it in 2018 Darkest hour. In his portrayal of Winston Churchill, a flawed leader who stared down Hitler and the Nazis before World War II, Oldman is almost unrecognizable. It’s a trademark, the way he can slip in and out of roles that makes him just as interesting as a villain as a good guy. In this role, he was most recently seen as the leader of a group of outcasts at a British Secret Service in the Apple TV+ drama series. Slow horses. Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, a frail and hygiene-challenged spymaster whose eccentricities mask the fact that he’s the smartest spy in the room.

Here, Oldman talks about how a chance meeting with Malcolm McDowell led him to try his hand at character creation. Here’s how the most chameleon actor of his generation found his mojo and found his way to wildly different performances across the board Harry Potter Unpleasant Bram Stoker’s Dracula, True Romance, Leon: The Professional, State of Grace, Tinkerer, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Hannibal and so many others.