Gary Oldman
Political correctness has become a straightjacket.
I like a cheese and pickle. Nice cheese and pickle on a real old-fashioned bread. Ploughman's lunch.
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.
You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.
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.
'Nil By Mouth' was a bit autobiographical, but as I always pointed out at the time, that's not my dad.
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.
Overall I enjoy a certain anonymity. I live a very normal, very ordinary life.
I just think political correctness is crap.
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.
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.
What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.
But you see, I have played more good guys than I have played villains.
I applaud anything that can take a kid away from a PlayStation or a Gameboy. That is a miracle in itself.
I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles' faces on it. It would be a collector's item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.
I hadn't worked for a couple of years so I thought it would be nice to earn some money and pay the bills.
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.
I wasn't ever a huge fan of comics. Just not one of those kids, you know?
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.
If one could have a wish, or an alternative life, I would've liked to have been John Lennon.
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.
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.
My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.
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.
Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.
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.
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.
I did have a knack for playing weirdos. There's still sort of this perception of me out there as being this crazy guy.
I want my weekends off and I want to put my kids to bed. Those are good reasons to want to be in 'Batman 2'.
We lived in a flat that you could pretty much fit in my current kitchen. No wonder people drink! I can't understand why they don't throw themselves off the balconies.
I had what AA calls 'a convincer' - which made me realize that I couldn't do it any more. I went out drinking for about 70 hours here in London. At the end I knew I was done.
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.
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.
Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.Collection: Play
I like these calm little moments before the storm, it reminds me of BeethovenCollection: Storm
We're given a code to live our lives by. We don't always follow it, but it's still there.Collection: Code Of Ethics
You always hope that the cloak of inspiration will fall, and you'll be O.K.Collection: Fall
To be able to do this job in the first place you've got to have a bit of an ego.Collection: Jobs
How do you remember all those lines? By forgetting everything else.Collection: Lines
At the Oscars, if you didn't vote for '12 Years a Slave' you were a racist.Collection: Years
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.Collection: Self Esteem
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.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Thinking
Impressionists have to paint with a very broad stroke because you've got to see it within a couple of seconds. You go, "That's a really funny Robert De Niro." As an actor, though, you look at different aspects of a character. I try to completely surround myself with the assignment. It's like being in a big cloud and then some of it rains through.Collection: Couple
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.Collection: Google
Each role you play, they set a bar of challenges that you meet. And in the past, I've played characters that emotionally expressed themselves a bit more in a physical way. It was a joy, actually.Collection: Character
Being a good director is knowing sometimes when not to say something.Collection: Knowing
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.Collection: Jobs
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?Collection: Crazy