Oldman’s son defends him against mother’s abuse claims

After winning the Oscar for Best Actor in his film Darkest Hour this week, abuse allegations against Gary Oldman resurfaced with the # MeToo movement being a major topic of discussion in Hollywood of late.

Said allegations go back over a decade to Oldman’s former marriage to third wife Donya Fiorentino, to whom he was married from 1997 to 2001. She told the Daily Mail in February that the relationship was a “nightmare.”

In 2001, she accused him of hitting her with a telephone in front of their young children, and abusing her physically and emotionally throughout their marriage.

In legal documents at the time, Fiorentino alleged, “I picked up the phone to call the police, Gary put his hand on my neck and squeezed. I backed away, with the phone receiver in my hand. I tried to dial 911. Gary grabbed the phone receiver from my hand, and hit me in the face with the telephone receiver three or four times. Both of the children were crying.”

During their ensuing and contentious divorce, Oldman said her claims were “replete with lies, innuendoes and half- truths.” He was eventually awarded custody of their two children.

Fiorenti not old TMZ shortly after his Oscar win, “Congratulations, Gary and congratulations to the Acad- emy for awarding not one but two abusers with Oscars. I thought we had evolved. What happened to the #MeToo movement?”

She was also referencing Kobe Bryant’s Oscar win for Best Animated Short, as he was accused of raping a woman in 2003.

Now, in an effort to defend his father, Oldman and Fiorentino’s 20-year-old son Gulliver has written in an open letter that claims the abuse never happened. Despite being a toddler at the time, Gulliver says he can confirm this.

“In the case of my father, there is only innocence,” he writes. “There never has been any guilt. ... Custody of children is not given to a wife beater, and under most circumstances, hardly ever a man. My having lived, full time with my father should be in itself, proof enough.”

He goes on to refer to Oldman as “my only hero,” and to Fiorentino as “a sad and very troubled person most of her life.”

Fiorentino was previously married to David Fincher, with whom she has a daughter, while Oldman first married actress Lesley Manville in 1987, but left her three months after the birth of their son for Uma Thurman, whom he married in 1990. He has since been in relationships with Alexandra Edenborough and Gisele Schmidt, with whom he’s been married since 2017.