Gary Oldman is detailing how his career choices got “old” fast. The Oscar winner told Variety that he was “typecast” to play villains for years, ranging from “The Fifth Element” to “Lost in Space” and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” not to mention “True Romance” and “Hannibal.”
“I got sort of typecast for a while,” Oldman said. “I became kind of like the poster boy for the ‘rent-a-villain.’ Sort of, ‘Oh, we need a villain and we’ll get Gary.’ I don’t know how that happened, but it happened. And it was fun for a while, but eventually, I just put a stop to it. It got a little old. But they are fun to play.”
Oldman continued, “This particularly, like ‘The Fifth Element,’ much like ‘Lost in Space,’ they’re comic villains. [‘Lost in Space’] was fun, great cast. I thought the story, it was a lot to put in. It was a lot of movie in two hours. But [Dr. Zachary Smith] was fun to play because it’s a villain with a tongue in the cheek or a little twinkle in the eye.”
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It was in part being cast as Commissioner Gordon in Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” trilogy that changed the roles Oldman later landed. “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” scribe David S. Goyer said during the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that he was “very surprised” to learn that Oldman was to play Commissioner Gordon. “Now that I’m a more experienced filmmaker, I realized that it’s really exciting to cast against type,” Goyer said. “It’s exciting for filmmakers, and it’s also exciting for the actors.”
Oldman went on to later star in “Slow Horses,” “Mank,” “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” and “Darkest Hour” for which he won an Oscar for portraying Winston Churchill. He told IndieWire in 2024 that he would want to return to the “Harry Potter” universe after playing Sirius Black in the films. “I love Sirius,” Oldman said. “He wasn’t in it enough. He turned up and then he went through the veil,” adding, “Maybe in a few years, I could do Dumbledore.” That honor has instead been given to John Lithgow for the “Harry Potter” prequel TV series.
