GARY OLDMAN ON ROLE It was really scary playing Churchill.. if it weren’t for him we’d now all speak German
SLEEPLESS nights and a fear of failure gripped him after he accepted the most daunting of roles... opposite Adolf Hitler.
He knew the world’s eyes would be on him and that one wrong move could leave his reputation in tatters.
But then he was never one to shy from the challenge.
While Sir Winston Churchill would be scary, at times very scary, Gary Oldman worked harder than ever to make sure he was up to the job.
In new movie Darkest Hour – set in 1940 when Hitler’s forces were poised to invade Britain – filmgoers will see that he pulled it off with flying colours.
And tonight, the 59-year-old Brit is tipped to land a Golden Globe for his portrayal of our legendary wartime leader.
Yet in a new interview, Oldman says he was surprised at being approached to play Churchill in the first place.
“Really, Churchill? I thought it was a bit ridiculous,” he laughs.
PETRIFIED
“The role was never on my bucket list. Occasionally, something will come along like Darkest Hour and the prospect of doing it is really scary.
“One that gives you a little bit of fear and a few sleepless nights, because you say, ‘Yes, I would love to do that,’ and then you lie awake at night going, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? What have I committed to? Can I do it?’ But then the work starts.”
Ah yes, the work. And during the first few weeks of preparation and rehearsals, Oldman admitted he was petrified of failure. So he left nothing to chance.
He worked with historian Dr Larry Arnn and listened to hours of archived audio recordings. But Oldman was determined to push away stereotypes of the man laid out in many other performances.
He adds: “I watched some early news footage of Churchill and I think what I had realised was that he’s been represented in older age.
“So you see this rather grumpy curmudgeon, shuffling around in his monogram slippers either in the so-called ‘wilderness years’ and in infirmity.
“And what was on the page, and certainly what I saw in footage, was someone who was alive, dynamic, energised, marching ahead of everyone, skipping around, a twinkle in his eye.
“He looked like a baby. He had a cherubic sort of grin and a real twinkle, a real something going for him and that was a Churchill that was not in my head.”
Oldman feels the movie offers younger generations an insight into the unfathomable notion of how Hitler came close to ruling the world. Churchill was unpopular when he took over as Prime Minister, a year into the Second World War. But when the Germans were defeated in 1945, he was hailed as one of the greatest ever leaders.
The actor goes on: “But he had no army and think about it, you know that joke, if it wasn’t for Churchill, we’d all be speaking German? There’s truth in that, because you would have started seeing Nazis and Germans on the street, then the swastika flying. He said the best night’s sleep he ever had was Pearl Harbor, not because of the loss of life.
“He knew the horror of war, because he had been at the front in the First World War.
PORTLY
“He had seen it up close first hand. He knew that America would come into the war.”
Oldman also tells how he faced an enormous challenge in the physical portrayal of portly, cigarsmoking Churchill – and how he lured veteran make-up Hollywood designer Kazuhiro Tsuji out of retirement to make it possible.
He reveals: “I thought he is literally the only man on the planet who could do this. I told director Joe Wright that we need him. So I met him, read him the script and he said, ‘Yes,’ – so I dragged him out of retirement.
“Then, during production, I had David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick who applied and painted me every day. I needed to see Churchill looking back at me in the mirror, to have the hutzpah, to get up there, do him justice.”
But the star admits he panicked that the heavy duty prosthetics and foundation layers could be so extreme that they would wreck his complexion – and bring filming to a halt.
The Londoner explains: “I’ve worn this kind of make-up before
I laughed when they asked me to play Churchill, but then I got scared... could I do it? GARY OLDMAN ON PLAYING BRITAIN’S GREATEST STATESMAN