GARY OLDMAN

SOBER AND NEWLY MARRIED, THE AWARDWINNING DARKEST HOUR ACTOR FINALLY SEES THE LIGHT

The respected actor finds peace in his personal life thanks to sobriety and his happy marriage.

Gary Oldman had good reasons to celebrate as he danced on the back of a booth at Focus Features’ recent Golden Globes afterparty. Not only had he just won best actor in a drama for his acclaimed turn as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, but he was accompanied by his new wife, Gisele Schmidt. “We laugh a lot,” Gary tells Closer. “She ran a gallery of fine photography, and my hobby that I love is [taking] pictures. It’s nice to have shared interests.”

He’s a picture of serenity these days, but Gary — who will turn 60 on March 21 — has endured his own darkest hours. His alcoholic father left the family’s London home when Gary was 7, and the aspiring actor later worked on assembly lines and beheaded pigs to make a living. “Not having much money can give you an anger,” says Gary, who developed a drinking problem of his own. “You could call it a coping mechanism, but that would just be an excuse. I just drank too much.”

After he found fame playing such diverse roles as Beethoven in Immortal Beloved and the titular vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Gary checked into rehab in 1995. “Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child,” Gary, father of Alfie, 30, Gulliver, 20, and Charlie, 18, has said. “Of the three, finding sobriety was the hardest thing.”

TRUE ROMANCE

Finding lasting love hasn’t been an easy task, either. Gary has been married five times, including to actresses Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) and Uma Thurman (whom he met on the set of 1990’s State of Grace). He wed Gisele in a low-key LA ceremony last September. “I’ve had a few goes at it now, so I’ve probably learnt something,” says Gary of his previous marriages. “I’m nearly 60, and I think at last I’ve come home.”

Gisele has a 9-year-old son from a previous marriage. “Her ex, they were together 20 years — he’s a great guy,” says Gary. “He was at our wedding. We’re all very friendly.”

While he’s known for his astonishing physical transformations onscreen, Gary has come to realize his most important role is as a family man. “I look at those boys, and they are my greatest accomplishment — that gives me a sense I’ve got something right,” he says of his sons. “I take great joy and peace from that. It helps me sleep at night knowing that hopefully they’re going to be OK.”

Underneath all those layers of makeup as Churchill, Gary finally felt comfortable in his own skin. “Acting was my way out, a sort of avenue of escape,” he admits. “It’s taken me a long time, but I’m happy.”

Now he no longer needs to hide behind such larger-than-life characters. “I actually proposed to my wife on the set of Darkest Hour, so I was dressed as Winston Churchill,” he says with a laugh. “And she still said yes!”

“As you get older, your lifestyle changes. I don’t want to be in a hotel room away from my family.”

— Gary

“When I saw the finished product, I had to pinch myself,” he says of portraying Lee Harvey Oswald in 1991’s JFK.

“I didn’t want to play Sid Vicious,” says Gary (with Chloe Webb) of the punkrock icon in Sid & Nancy. “I wanted to be him.”

To become Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, “I would set my alarm for 2:15,” he says, and after four hours of makeup, “the crew and actors would arrive.”

“We’re like peas in a pod,” Gary says of wife Gisele Schmidt. “She’s a good one.”

Gary earned his firstever Oscar nomination as the aging MI6 agent George Smiley in 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

The role of Commissioner Gordon in Batman Begins changed his “Scary Gary” image.