Gary Oldman names the “hardest thing” he had to do in ‘Harry Potter’
Thanks to the franchise’s insistence that virtually every major role be filled by either a British or Irish actor, the list of esteemed thespians hailing from those shores who didn’t sign on for a Harry Potter movie was a lot shorter than the ones who did. For Gary Oldman, though, it was much more than a job.
He may have been fairly critical of his performances as Sirius Black in Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire, and Order of the Phoenix, but the money-spinning series came along at the perfect moment for a performer who’d recently been awarded sole custody of his children following a divorce.
Alongside Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, Oldman couldn’t have been more thankful that two major Hollywood properties came along at roughly the same time that paid him the maximum amount of money for the least amount of work, allowing him to focus his energies on family at the expense of being sent around the world to shoot on location and continually uproot his kids.
For someone famed for the immersive approach that’s seen them become lauded as one of their generation’s top talents, Oldman was hardly required to dip into his signature ‘pain bag’ in order to embody either Harry Potter’s godfather or Batman’s closest confidant in the Gotham City police, but that doesn’t mean it was a cakewalk.
Well, it sort of was compared to his more transformative and chameleonic turns, especially when Oldman relayed the most challenging thing he ever had to do on set. Was it a grandstanding monologue? An intense character-driven showdown? An emotionally resonant exchange? Nope, it required nothing more of him than lying completely still.
“The most difficult thing I ever had to do, oddly enough, was in one of the, I can’t remember which one, in one of the Harry Potters, I had to lie by that lake,” he said on Happy Sad Confused. “There was like a frozen lake, and I’m sort of dead and my soul is leaving my body and then it appears.”
Even though the scene was literally remaining prone on the ground for an extended period of time, Oldman lamented how “it took forever”. The scale of such productions meant that even a straightforward setup could rumble on for up to a week, leaving the star adamant, “You can shoot this in two days.”
It doesn’t sound that taxing, in fairness, and there were some benefits. “Then you’d have to go, ‘I think my kidneys are getting a bit cold,’ and they put the hot water bottle on you, and you’d lie there,” he continued. “And then day three, you go, ‘My neck is killing me in this position,’ and they’d put a little pillow underneath.” It may not be how Oscars are won, but for Oldman, it was an exhausting process to stay so still for so long.