Top 80 Gary Oldman Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Shakespeare doesn’t really write subtext, you play the subtext.”

— Gary Oldman

52. “How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand.”

— Gary Oldman

53. “I tend to read non-fiction.”

— Gary Oldman

54. “So Harry Potter came in and it is nice that I have kids of the right age. I took them to London and they walked around the set and met Harry Potter and that is thrilling.”

— Gary Oldman

55. “You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it’s Gary Oldman crying; it’s not the character crying.”

— Gary Oldman

56. “I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can’t really move from it: it’s on buses, in stores, it’s everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.”

— Gary Oldman

57. “My favorite meal would have to be good old-fashioned eggs, over easy, with bacon. Many others, but you can’t beat that on a Sunday morning, especially with a cup of tea.”

— Gary Oldman

58. “It’s becoming increasingly harder and harder; there’s no such thing as independent film anymore. There aren’t any, they don’t exist. In the old days you could go and get a certain amount of the budget with foreign sales, now everybody wants a marketable angle.”

— Gary Oldman

59. “The industry has changed. Two years ago I could tell a company I’ve got Russell Crowe and that would get the film made. Now they’d ask ‘And who’s the girl?’ Just one famous face isn’t enough any more.”

— Gary Oldman

60. “I like celluloid, I like film, I like the way that when a movie is projected it sort of breathes a little in the gate. That’s the magic of it to me.”

— Gary Oldman

61. “I don’t think Hollywood knows what to do with me. I would imagine that when it comes to romantic comedies, my name would be pretty low down on the list.”

— Gary Oldman

62. “I still don’t have a publicist. If I’m in a film, you have an obligation to promote it, I’ll do as much as I can.”

— Gary Oldman

63. “I don’t see a great difference between someone sending a robot or a drone to bomb people and controlling it on a PlayStation from another country. It’s thousands of miles away as opposed to someone in an airplane who is thousands of feet away releasing a bomb.”

— Gary Oldman

64. “I wasn’t ever a huge fan of comics. Just not one of those kids, you know?”

— Gary Oldman

65. “It’s funny: I’m a lifelong musician, but because I principally play the piano it’s been a solitary thing.”

— Gary Oldman

66. “I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father, and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up sometimes.”

— Gary Oldman

67. “The great thing about having been in a lot of make-up, and stuff like that, is that when you’re working with someone who’s in it, and you’ve been there and done it, but you’re not in it anymore, you feel so good.”

— Gary Oldman

68. “Interesting things come your way but as you get older, your lifestyle changes. I don’t want to travel; I don’t want to be in a hotel room away from my family.”

— Gary Oldman

69. “If one could have a wish, or an alternative life, I would’ve liked to have been John Lennon.”

— Gary Oldman

70. “You can play older than yourself. You can play younger than yourself up to a point, and then that just becomes impossible because you carry a weight with you that you can’t shift, unless you have very boyish looks.”

— Gary Oldman

71. “I’m not the best audience for that because I’m not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that.”

— Gary Oldman

72. “I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.”

— Gary Oldman

73. “If you constantly pander to the wishes of others, you will never accomplish a thing.”

— Gary Oldman

74. “I’m still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent – you get contaminated after so long.”

— Gary Oldman

75. “Over the years, I have been asked to play these sort of scary frenetic characters that express their emotions physically.”

— Gary Oldman

76. “I did have a knack for playing weirdos. There’s still sort of this perception of me out there as being this crazy guy.”

— Gary Oldman

77. “The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it’s a constitution that’s the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it’s the most generous nation in the world.”

— Gary Oldman

78. “I think filmmaking should be a wonderfully free collaborative process, and it so very rarely is. I often see directors as jailers of my talent.”

— Gary Oldman

79. “Being a good director is knowing sometimes when not to say something.”

— Gary Oldman

80. “As a drama student I got into Thirties and Forties suits.”

— Gary Oldman

81. “But you see, I have played more good guys than I have played villains.”

— Gary Oldman

82. “Sometimes directors feel like they have to justify that hat that they are wearing they’ve got on as a director, and they come in and they tweak and interfere.”

— Gary Oldman

83. “Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you’re really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.”

— Gary Oldman