Gary: My finest hour – and I owe it all to mum
British Best Actor winner talks exclusively to Mail’s showbiz writer in LA …
‘She has always encouraged me’
MOST stars picking up their first Oscar would be preparing to celebrate in lavish style.
But Gary Oldman was looking forward to a simpler pleasure as he finally got his hands on a precious golden statuette – a nice cup of tea with his mum.
The British actor used his speech at the 90th Oscars ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood to tell his 98-year- old mother he’d be round soon with the award so ‘put the kettle on’.
Oldman, 59, was named best actor for his sublime portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, beating fellow Britons Daniel Day-Lewis and Daniel Kaluuya.
The evening was dominated by The Shape Of Water, which won four Oscars including best film and best director. Frances McDormand was best actress and Sam Rockwell best supporting actor for their roles in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, while best supporting actress went to Allison Janney for I, Tonya.
As well as Oldman, British winners included The Silent Child, for best short film, and cameraman Roger Deakins, 68, for cinematography on Blade Runner 2049.
In his speech to the star- studded audience, Oldman thanked America, but not his native Britain – although he did give a tender acknowledgement of his roots. He said he wanted to thank his mother Kathleen, a retired cafe owner ‘who is older than Oscar’ and who has lived with him in Los Angeles for 20 years since he moved her out of the family’s home in South East London.
He added: ‘She is 99 years young next birthday. And she is watching this from the comfort of her sofa. I say to my mother, thank you for your love and support. Put the kettle on, I’m bringing Oscar home.’
Afterwards Oldman told the Daily Mail his mother was his ‘champion’ – she raised him and his two sisters alone after her husband walked out when Oldman was seven, and encouraged her son to take up acting.
She would have laughed at the cuppa quip, he said. ‘I was parched and hadn’t had a sip or a cup of anything since 11 o’clock in the morning – well, you can’t when you go to one of those things because you’re in your seat for hours – and I knew mum was sitting on the couch at home with my sister watching the Oscars. She would have had a laugh about it.’
Gesturing around the Dolby ballroom where the post-awards Governors Ball is held, he said: ‘She can’t see very well, her hearing is not as good as it was, and all this would be madness.
‘She uses a stick and wouldn’t be able to navigate the tables and chairs. She was watching on television and I know she was happy for me.’
Oldman, who battled alcoholism for years, said that he and his mother have always been close.
‘I can remember holding her hand as she walked me to school. You have to imagine the postwar years of the early 1960s when there were still bomb sites in parts of South London.
‘She was my first champion and always encouraged me back in those early days of trying to work out if I could make a go of this acting thing. I would see Albert Finney and the others on the cinema screen and they were the ones I looked up to, and she encouraged me to go for it. And I did.’
As he spoke, he spooned one of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck’s red fruit sorbet desserts into his mouth. ‘Not sure what it is, looks like something out of Game Of Thrones,’ he laughed.
‘I’ll leave the tea and have it tomorrow morning. PG Tips. I’ll make it in the pot and put the milk in the cup first. That’s the way I was taught, that’s how I’ve always liked it.’
Oldman was surrounded by family – two of his three sons, Gulliver, 20, and Charlie, 19, sat with his fifth wife, Gisele Schmidt.
His first wife Lesley Manville, who had been nominated for best supporting actress for Phantom Thread, was at the ceremony with their son Alfie, 29. ‘It was wonderful to see Lesley here, it was really lovely,’ Oldman said. ‘And it was wonderful to see all the boys together. We’re divorced but we go over there [London] for dinner,’ he said, adding that he will see Miss Manville on stage when she and Jeremy Irons bring the West End production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night to Los Angeles.
Oldman revealed that Miss Manville made it to the Oscars having performed two shows at Wyndham’s Theatree on Saturday. ‘She was on an early flight to Amsterdam on Sunday morning and caught a flight from there to here, just amazing.’ He looked at his Oscar and at the inscription.
‘It’s got my name on it,’ he said. ‘It’s the ultimate accolade and, to be honest, I’m a little shellshocked. But, in the words of John Lennon, it’s the “toppermost of the poppermost”.’
He praised Darkest Hour director Joe Wright and the team of artists who helped transform him into Churchill – Kazuhiro Tsuji, David Malinowski and Lucy Sibbick took home the best make-up Oscar.
‘The whole experience was so unique that to get something like this,’ he said, pointing to his statuette, ‘at the end of it feels a bit obscene. I mean, I loved Churchill. I loved playing him. I loved that he wasn’t a saint but the life achievement of the man was extraordinary.
‘People ask me if Churchill was an alcoholic. I’m not by any strength of the imagination an expert on Churchill but I used to drink – and I know that if you have a bottle and a half of wine at lunch then you’re done in the afternoon and you basically want to go and have a lie down.
‘The energy that he had to do what he did, was extraordinary. So, no, I couldn’t say if he was an alcoholic, he was a hugely gifted but complex man. We tend to want our gifted people nowadays to be bland and a bit beige. I think we’d have been in trouble if Churchill had been beige.’
With that, Oldman departed for the after-party at Vanity Fair.
‘I won’t get my PG Tips there, either,’ he said with a chuckle.