Hollywood suicide
He’s the Brit who conquered Tinseltown. Now Gary Oldman faces ostracism after a spectacularly obscene and non-PC rant against the movie elite
He’S PLAYED Sid Vicious, dracula, Lee harvey Oswald and a distinguished line of film villains. But hollywood has recoiled in horror after British star Gary Oldman unveiled his most shocking persona to date — as a liberal-baiting, political-correctness-hating conservative.
The chameleon actor — the South Londonborn son of a welder — rarely gives interviews, but he chose to reveal his true self during a rambling, nine- hour talk with Playboy magazine. It was a fitting place for a man not afraid to talk about a string of failed relationships with the likes of Uma Thurman and Isabella Rossellini, not to mention riotous nights with groupies.
As he made abundantly clear, the 56-yearold thespian doesn’t like reality TV, ‘helicopter’ parents, Miley Cyrus or the pretentiousness of some of his fellow thespians. however, it was Oldman’s attack on the hypocrisy of political correctness and his defence of Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks that has landed him in deep trouble.
A classically British actor in his devotion to his craft rather than celebrity, Oldman is widely regarded both by his peers and critics as one of the finest actors of his generation. his films have grossed around £6 billion — putting the likes of Leonardo di Caprio or Brad Pitt in the shade. Oldman has proved he can play not only baddies but anyone from world-weary spy George Smiley in a remake of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to harry Potter’s dashing godfather, Sirius Black.
But his friends in Tinseltown may now be wishing he was still locked up in the dreaded wizard prison of Azkaban. denouncing the double standards of hollywood, Oldman chose to defend two fellow stars who have earned pariah status after allegedly making anti-Semitic or homophobic remarks.
Oldman urged people to ‘get over’ Gibson’s notorious anti- Jewish slurs when, arrested for suspected drink- driving in 2006, he told a police officer: ‘F****** Jews . . . the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’
Gibson’s outburst came just two years after his film The Passion Of Christ had been attacked for demonising the Jews. Comment-
‘I have views this town doesn’t share but I’m no fascist’
ing on Gibson’s sins, Oldman said: ‘I just think political correctness is crap . . . Get over it.’
he went on: ‘he got drunk and said a few things, but we’ve all said those things. It’s the hypocrisy of it that drives me crazy.’
Gibson, now forced to finance his own films, ‘is in a town that’s run by Jews and he said the wrong thing because he’s actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him’.
Oldman continued: ‘But some Jewish guy in his office somewhere hasn’t turned and said: “That f****** Kraut” or “F*** those Germans”, whatever it is? We all hide and try to be so politically correct.’
Turning to actor Alec Baldwin, also persona non grata in showbusiness circles for making a string of homophobic remarks, Oldman said he ‘didn’t blame him’ after calling a persistent reporter an ‘F-A-G’.
Oldman said he loathed the way Left-wing comedians get away with saying what others would be condemned for — and used appalling language to demonstrate what he meant.
‘Well, if I called [democrat leader] Nancy Pelosi a c***,’ he said, ‘I can’t really say that. But [comedians] Bill Maher and John Stewart can, and nobody’s going to stop them from working because of it.’
As for the Oscars, anyone who didn’t vote for 12 Years A Slave — black British director Steve McQueen’s excoriating attack on slavery — risked being labelled a racist, Oldman argued.
he added: ‘I do have particular views and opinions that most of this town doesn’t share, but it’s not like I’m a fascist or a racist.’ Oldman, who l ambasted t he Obama administration’s weak international leaders hi p, described hi s own politics as ‘libertarian’. But he claimed he had to hide his views as ‘ conservatives in hollywood don’t have a podium’.
having trashed hollywood’s politics, the actor — who conceded to Playboy he might have been too blunt in his interview — still had plenty of vitriol to spare for its output, and his own films in particular.
he dismissed the lucrative harry Potter
‘I’ve been a bit of a disaster as far as marriage goes’
films and Batman’s Dark Knight series (in which he plays Police Commissioner Gordon) as simply ‘work’. And he can’t bear Sid And Nancy, in which he played the doomed Sex Pistol, or the sci-fi film The Fifth Element, in which he was an evil industrialist.
As for his portrayal of Beethoven in the 1994 film Immortal Beloved, he ‘wasn’t the right person . . . and turned it down half a dozen times’ before he said yes. Oldman said he no longer upsets fans of his films by telling them they were a ‘piece of ****’ and now simply keeps his views to himself.
Well, he certainly hasn’t done that this time. Rather proving his point about what you can and can’t say as a Hollywood star, Oldman’s remarks drew a barrage of fire from civil liberties, anti-racism and gay ri ghts groups. In what some observers took to be an admission that his career i s on the l i ne, Oldman apologised just a day after the interview appeared.
In a l etter to two prominent Jewish groups, the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the actor said he was ‘ deeply r emorseful’ t hat his comments were ‘offensive to many Jewish people’.
On reading them, he realised ‘how insensitive they may be, and how they may indeed contribute to a furtherance of a false stereotype’. The ‘Jewish People’, he added with what struck some as a touch of sarcasm, ‘surely are the chosen people’.
As the internet was flooded with expressions of both shock and awe from Oldman’s many admirers, it’s clear that no one ever expected this working- class hero with a penchant for edgy roles in trendy films to emerge as such an oldschool reactionary.
After establishing himself as the enfant terrible of British cinema, Oldman moved to California in the early Nineties to go for the big time.
His heavy-drinking private life was to prove as much a rollercoaster as his career. He left his first wife, British actress Lesley Manville, to work his way through Hollywood stars Uma Thurman and Isabella Rossellini (whom he didn’t marry) and model Donya Fiorentino.
His 2001 divorce battle with Fiorentino, whom he had met at Alcoholics Anonymous, was particularly brutal. She accused him of being a vicious, hopeless addict and serial philanderer who beat her and who boasted of blowing thousands on drink, drugs and prostitutes. He countered that she was a lying cocaine addict who’d married him only because he was famous.
Oldman won custody of their two children and is now married to his fourth wife, British jazz singer Alexandra Edenborough.
Oldman told Playboy he was ‘not proud’ of his track record on marriage, adding: ‘It’s all been a bit of a disaster. I have very good artistic instincts, often right on the money. Love, not so successful.’
Asked if he had had many groupies over the years, Oldman admitted to his Playboy interviewer he’d even had ‘some wild nights’ in the Hollywood hotel where they were sitting. One memorable tryst, he revealed, involved a ‘vodka-fuelled’ trip to San Francisco that had coincided with the city’s huge 1989 earthquake.
He said: ‘We were literally at the epicentre. Afterwards it was like: “Was it good for you, darling? Because the earth definitely moved for me.” ’
Few people were immune to the temptations of working i n an industry full of young, attractive people, he said.
Oldman says he hasn’t drunk alcohol for 17 years and insists he tried drugs only once. Legalising cannabis was ‘silly’, he said, as so many drivers would get high.
He ridiculed claims that his Batman co-star Heath Ledger had tried to ‘become’ the character of The Joker (the villain he played) before dying of a drugs overdose. ‘There’s a lot of rubbish talked about acting, and i t’s often propagated by practitioners of it,’ said Oldman. ‘You just want to say: “Oh, shut up”.’
Raised in a tough working class home where his hard- drinking father was free with his fists and left the family when his son was seven, Oldman makes clear he has no time for the affectations of his co-stars.
Hollywood’s celebrity culture is a ‘ club’, he snorts derisively, whose members have to work hard at being famous.
He isn’t a member of that club, but if he had been, he adds in a bitter swipe at the Academy Awards, perhaps he might have won an Oscar by now.
As for the Golden Globe awards, chosen by a panel of foreign journalists, he says they’re a ‘ridiculous’ and ‘meaningless’ event any selfrespecting actor should boycott.
Anything else that gets his goat? Plenty, as it happens. He attacks helicopter parents who ‘ overschedule their children’ and give them a false sense of brilliance ‘ t hat l eads to narcissism, depression and anxiety’.
And don’t get him started on the entertainment world, which he says is a sea of mediocrity. Reality TV is the ‘museum of social decay’ while — in an obvious attack on Miley Cyrus — what now passes as a ‘hero’ for young people is ‘some idiot who can’t f****** sing or write or who’s shaking her ass and twerking in front of 11-year-olds’.
The film industry was bubbling with speculation yesterday over whether Oldman’s nine hours unburdening himself to Playboy might have damaged his career irreparably.
Gary Oldman may finally have learned that, in Hollywood, you depart too far from the script at your peril.