G
ary Oldman is standing on a balcony at Chateau Marmont, taking in West Hollywood like a lord surveying his fiefdom. The magisterial three-piece ensemble he’s wearing is by Prada, but the darkly commanding presence he brings to it is pure Oldman: Dracula meets Beethoven meets Sirius Black. Hamming it up, he wields a curtain rod like a schoolmaster’s cane, then a magic wand, and finally a conductor’s baton, waving it triumphantly as though leading the city in a rendition of ‘Ode to Joy’. If Hollywood is playing to anyone’s beat now, it’s surely his. With his Oscar nomination for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy barely in the rearview mirror, the 54-year-old is reprising his role as Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated The Dark Knight Rises (‘You faint just watching the trailer. Oh my God, it’s going to make so much money’) and cooking up secret projects with, among others, Hollywood’s other reigning Brit, Colin Firth. This very afternoon he has been hailed by industry chronicle The Hollywood Reporter as ‘the top-grossing actor of all time’. It’s this last distinction that his American manager Douglas Urbanski, a close friend of 25 years who riffs with Oldman like a Costello to his Abbott, especially savours. ‘The piece uses all the right words, like “iconic” and “legendary”,’ Urbanski says. Oldman, who may have lived in America for 20 years and be one of Hollywood’s all-conquering heroes, weighs this up with a very English dry appreciation, a faintly disapproving smile creeping across his face. ‘You like big words like that, don’t you, Doug?’ But then, plenty of big words have been uttered about Oldman, not least by a generation of young actors who regard him with awe.
as he did at the end of April (‘That was kind of exciting’), or flying to Scotland for a two-day cameo in Monster Butler opposite his acting hero Malcolm McDowell (‘One of those things that had to be done’), or even plotting a possible return to the stage after almost 30 years (‘Here in LA, in some little dump, just for the hell of it’). ‘I just feel more open to stuff,’ he says over lunch in the garden. In person, Oldman is not what you’d expect: not brooding or diffident; upbeat would be closer to the truth. Thoughtful. Dressed neatly in a white shirt and black chinos, Oldman has no rough edges, just languid charm, even gentleness – which is not something you’d have heard a decade or two ago, when his sexiness burned through the screen and he was lionised and chastised in equal measure for being an acting genius (capable of explosive performances as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy or the Count in Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula), and an alcoholic hellraiser who tore through relationships with Uma Thurman and Isabella Rossellini (both of which barely lasted two years). That was the Oldman we knew, the original South London bad boy whose hard-drinking father left when he was seven, and who grew into a star and a loose cannon, at his wildest landing in jail for drunk-driving in 1991 after a night out with Kiefer Sutherland in LA, eventually checking into rehab a few years later. ‘The wilder days probably weren’t as wild as people reported,’ he says. ‘It seems like a whole other life, a different person. I don’t know if I liked myself very much then. I was caught up in a sort of tornado. You’re young and impressionable. You’ve got ambition, testosterone. You start to make money. You’re around beautiful women but you’ve always got this mistress, which is the work. It’s quite selfish. I just don’t think you necessarily have the maturity to handle it. With a bit of longevity, I’ve mellowed a bit. I think it’s about being… comfortable and settled. Though, I don’t mean settled as in, “Oh, I’ll just settle for that.” You can still strive to make things of quality.’ Perhaps it was becoming a single father in 2001, when his third marriage to American model Donya Fiorentino foundered and he was granted custody of sons Gulliver and Charlie, now 14 and 13, that shifted his priorities. (‘I [had] to be their moral compass,’ he has said.) A full-time ‘muppa’ (his children’s word for mum and papa combined) who did the daily school run and dined at home with the kids every night, Oldman started making familyfriendly career choices that kept him closer to home. Ambitious projects, such as a possible follow-up to his 1997 semi-autobiographical directorial debut, Nil by Mouth, were put on hold. He grew out of playing incendiary, high-octane villains and took to vulnerable, heroic father-figure roles, such as Sirius Black and Jim Gordon in the Harry Potter and Batman franchises – ‘[making] virtue look exciting’, as one critic put it. Then, in 2008, he married English jazz singer Alexandra Edenborough (‘generous, loyal, sweet, not a mean bone in her body’, says Urbanski), with whom he is currently redecorating their 1920s house in Los Feliz, Hollywood. ‘This is how you know it’s true love, when you watch them picking out stuff,’ says Urbanski. Oldman adds: ‘I’ll pass something and say, “You see that awning?” and she’ll go, “I was just going to mention that.” We’re completely in tune. I mean, occasionally I like blinds for something, she likes drapes and we get in a bit of a tangle…’ Later, with conspicuous zeal, he snaps one of the hotel’s wooden banisters on his iPhone and coos over a panel of Spanish tiles. ‘I know, this sounds boring,’ he says. ‘I’m dull. I sound dull.’ But domestic bliss seems only to have further released his acting capabilities. When Oldman landed the role of CONTINUED ON PAGE 164
‘The wilder days probably weren’t as wild as people reported. I don’t know if I liked myself very much. I was caught up in a sort of tornado’ Tom Hardy, his co-star in The Dark Knight Rises, calls him a ‘god’; Benedict Cumberbatch say’s he’s ‘a master at the height of his powers and an utter one-off ’; Daniel Radcliffe strives to emulate him; Ryan Gosling named him his favourite actor; and Jessica Chastain burst into tears when she met the man she ‘would gladly become a vampire [for], if it meant that I was to live eternally alongside [his] Dracula’. How many admirers still swoon over that performance? Perhaps the most surprising accolade has come from Miuccia Prada, who, clearly appreciating Oldman’s blend of sex appeal, humour and gravitas, cast him in her A/W 12 menswear show, featuring an austere collection of high collars and tailcoats intended as a ‘parody of male power’, and also picked him for that collection’s ad campaign, shot by David Sims. ‘I thought about it for 10 seconds and said, “Yeah, OK, why not?”’ says Oldman. ‘It was different. It was a gas, mainly because of Mrs Prada and her team, who are meticulous and treated me royally. Also, my youngest, Charlie, wants to be a designer, so he’s been lucky to meet Miuccia and be hanging out with the right people.’ Catwalking in Milan is just the sort of leftfield venture Oldman loves right now. Like directing a webcast of Jack White in concert, 128 |
H A R P E R’ S B A Z A A R
| August 2012
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AN ENGLISHMAN IN LA Gary Oldman photographed at Chateau Marmont, wearing wool suit, £995, Burberry Prorsum. Cotton shirt, £195, Paul Smith. Previous pages: wool coat, £1,710; wool waistcoat, £715; wool trousers, £525; cotton shirt, £335, all Prada. Satin bow tie, £46; sunglasses, £203, both Paul Smith. See Stockists for details. Hair and grooming by Erica Sauer at Eamgmt