Gary Oldman can make a character’s bad manners feel like a deliberate defence. We rate him most when the voice and physical business leave something unspoken; when every line demands attention, even his gifts can become tiring.
Fi1m perspective
In Slow Horses (2022), Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb looks repulsive by choice. Costume designer Guy Speranza supplies the neglected raincoat and socks with the toes out; Oldman makes their wearer seem determined to repel company. We laughed at how completely he commits to being unpleasant, especially beside Kristin Scott Thomas’s immaculately dressed Diana Taverner. Yet the performance lets us suspect that the mess is useful to him, a way of keeping other people from looking too closely. It is the strongest reason to watch a series whose office life is more interesting than its thriller plots.
After the breakthroughs of Sid and Nancy (1986) and Prick Up Your Ears (1987), Hollywood made frequent use of him as a villain in the early 1990s. Supporting franchise roles followed from the mid-2000s. By Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), his George Smiley offered a quieter, more contained lead. The capacity to hold back was there; it is worth remembering when the louder performances threaten to define him.
Luc Besson gives that louder Oldman considerable room in Léon: The Professional (1994). As Norman Stansfield, he brings an ugly excitement that makes his appearances gripping, but the insistence can also turn danger into theatre. Jean Reno’s restraint gives us a welcome pause from him. We would not remove the excess altogether: it belongs to the film’s appeal, though Besson might have done better to ask for less of it.
The excess is less useful in Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat (2019), where his Jürgen Mossack explains money straight to camera alongside Antonio Banderas’s Ramón Fonseca. Oldman’s German accent is laboured, and Banderas is the more amusing company. Ellen Mirojnick dresses them as men accustomed to getting their way, while Soderbergh shoots them in bright, flat, saturated frames. The clothes and images make sense of their complacency. The performances keep enjoying it long after the joke has worn thin.
Lamb gives Oldman something more worthwhile to do with calculated bad behaviour. The occasional decency matters because he does so little to advertise it, and it makes the repellence funny without exhausting our patience. Start with Slow Horses; no great enthusiasm for espionage is required.
Biography
Gary Oldman is an English actor. He trained at Rose Bruford College and began his career in theatre in 1979 before making his film debut in 1982.
He is known for roles including Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), Norman Stansfield in Léon: The Professional (1994), Jim Gordon in the Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), Sirius Black in the Harry Potter series (2004–2011), and Harry Truman in Oppenheimer (2023). He played Jackson Lamb in the series Slow Horses (2022–) and Jürgen Mossack in the film The Laundromat (2019). Oldman received an Academy Award for Darkest Hour (2017).
