Top 80 Gary Oldman Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “What other people think of me is none of my business.”

— Gary Oldman

2. “I like these calm little moments before the storm, it reminds me of Beethoven.”

— Gary Oldman

3. “You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.”

— Gary Oldman

4. “Reality TV to me is the museum of social decay.”

— Gary Oldman

5. “My passion and energy get mistaken for anger.”

— Gary Oldman

6. “I enjoy playing characters where the silence is loud.”

— Gary Oldman

7. “We’re given a code to live our lives by. We don’t always follow it, but it’s still there.”

— Gary Oldman

8. “I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano.”

— Gary Oldman

9. “I was quiet, a loner. I was one of those children where, if you put me in a room and gave me some crayons and a pencils, you wouldn’t hear from me for nine straight hours. And I was always drawing racing cars and rockets and spaceships and planes, things that were very fast that would take me away.”

— Gary Oldman

10. “People who know me, they know I have a sense of humor, I’m a bit of a joker, a bit of a clown really, and I would love someone to exploit that side of me and send me a romantic comedy.”

— Gary Oldman

11. “Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.”

— Gary Oldman

12. “I know I’m pretty, but I ain’t as pretty as a couple of titties.”

— Gary Oldman

Featured in: Romance Quotes

13. “I never told my father I loved him before he died, and I have a lot of issues about that. They’re all swimming around in my head, in my heart, unresolved, and in a way it felt fitting to dedicate the film to him.”

— Gary Oldman

14. “It’s been said that alcoholics are egomaniacs with low self -esteem. It’s the prefect description. Being larger than life and yet your pride is crushed with self- loathing.”

— Gary Oldman

15. “Speaking very generally, I find that women are spiritually, emotionally, and often physically stronger than men.”

— Gary Oldman

16. “Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that.”

— Gary Oldman

17. “My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.”

— Gary Oldman

18. “Growing up in a particular neighborhood, growing up in a working-class family, not having much money, all of those things fire you and can give you an edge, can give you an anger.”

— Gary Oldman

19. “Rather like Batman, I embody the themes of the movie which are the values of family, courage and compassion and a sense of right and wrong, good and bad and justice.”

— Gary Oldman

20. “How do you remember all those lines? By forgetting everything else.”

— Gary Oldman

21. “I don’t go to premieres. I don’t go to parties. I don’t covet the Oscar. I don’t want any of that. I don’t go out. I just have dinner at home every night with my kids. Being famous, that’s a whole other career. And I haven’t got any energy for it.”

— Gary Oldman

22. “Whats fascinating is that when you write a script, its almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but youre not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.”

— Gary Oldman

23. “Overall I enjoy a certain anonymity. I live a very normal, very ordinary life.”

— Gary Oldman

24. “I’m almost incapable of lying. I’d be a terrible spy.”

— Gary Oldman

25. “The thing a drama school can’t give you is instinct. It can sharpen instinct but that can’t be taught, and you have to have intuition. It’s an essential ingredient.”

— Gary Oldman

26. “I applaud anything that can take a kid away from a PlayStation or a Gameboy – that is a miracle in itself.”

— Gary Oldman

27. “That’s what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can’t teach. You can’t give someone that. When you’re working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that’s where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.”

— Gary Oldman

28. “To be able to do this job in the first place you’ve got to have a bit of an ego.”

— Gary Oldman

29. “Political correctness has become a straightjacket.”

— Gary Oldman

30. “The script is your map of the world, isn’t it? And if someone knows that if it’s well-written, you get all of the beats, it will tell you everything you need to know.”

— Gary Oldman

31. “On set I keep myself to myself; I’d rather the director speak up. I’m not gonna direct a younger actor. I think the power of example works best, actually.”

— Gary Oldman

32. “And costume is so important for an actor. It absolutely helps to get into character; it’s the closest thing to you, it touches you. Some actors like to go into make-up and then put their clothes on, but I like to dress first; that’s my routine.”

— Gary Oldman

33. “To be honest, Im a little tired of playing bad guys. I long to do a comedy. But it was fun knocking Indiana Jones around.”

— Gary Oldman

34. “I like a cheese and pickle. Nice cheese and pickle on a real old-fashioned bread. Ploughman’s lunch.”

— Gary Oldman

35. “In the past, I’ve had my share of good reviews, but it’s always the crazy, scary, weirdo guy. I don’t even know how it happened. Look at me. I mean, when I’m naked, I look like a bald chicken. How did I get to be a scary bad guy?”

— Gary Oldman

36. “I was brought up by my mother and my two sisters, although they’re older than me and fled the nest very young, so I was technically raised as an only child, but I was very much loved.”

— Gary Oldman

37. “And of course I’ve got kids of my own now, and they love me being in the Harry Potter films. I’m now part of a phenomenon. You become incredibly cool to your kids, and you get a young fan base. So you became the cool dad at school. You’re suddenly hip.”

— Gary Oldman

38. “It’s always hard when you’re playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There’s a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone’s idea of that.”

— Gary Oldman

39. “I took a bit of a back seat, I had kids and I wanted to focus on them. There’s that period in the late ’90s, the early 2000s, where I didn’t do a great deal.”

— Gary Oldman

40. “I went and lived in Chicago for a year, and I studied at the police academy.”

— Gary Oldman

41. “I didn’t do drugs. It wasn’t my thing. But the drink was terrible. Today when I look back, it’s like I was another person. You could call it a coping mechanism, but that would be an excuse. I just drank too much.”

— Gary Oldman

42. “The great thing about Google is that you type in neuro-surgery and somehow you end up with Peter Sellers or watching Frank Sinatra. Google is a great resource.”

— Gary Oldman

43. “Well, I needed the work – that’s the honest answer. I haven’t worked for a while, a couple of years. So I thought it would be nice to get back to work and earn some money.”

— Gary Oldman

44. “There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn’t have got Osama bin Laden – it took us years, but it happened.”

— Gary Oldman

45. “Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director’s hat is only trying to justify his position.”

— Gary Oldman

46. “I’m rarely asked to play the smartest man in the room.”

— Gary Oldman

47. “At 23 it was all about acting. Today it’s getting my kids to school, making sure that they’ve done their homework. I’m in my fifties, and I’m turning into a square.”

— Gary Oldman

48. “People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can’t get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.”

— Gary Oldman

49. “When you play a character that is so emotionally closed there are times when you ask yourself if you are doing enough and if it’s reading. That is where you have a director, who is the barometer of what you are doing.”

— Gary Oldman

50. “People have an idea that one is in control of a career, a lot more than you really are. You can engineer things to an extent. But you are at the mercy of what comes in across the desk.”

— Gary Oldman