Gary Oldman has claimed his Harry Potter performance was less than brilliant and said his role in the hit film as “mediocre”.
The 66-year-old actor took on the role of Sirius Black in the iconic franchise, but confessed he wishes he had at least read the books to get a better sense of his character, like co-star Alan Rickman, who played Professor Snape. Despite looking back with a hint of regret, the star admitted the film came at the right time for him, as he was going through a messy divorce.
Chatting with Josh Horowitz on his Happy Sad Confused podcast, the actor confessed: “I think my work is mediocre in it.”
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Press Association)
Comparing himself to late Harry Potter star Rickman, who died in January 2016, he added: “Maybe if I had read the books like Alan, if I had got ahead of the curve, if I had known what’s coming, I honestly think I would have played it differently.”
However, at the time, he was understandably preoccupied after his marriage to model Donya Fiorentino came to an end – and he was granted full custody of the couple’s children.
Speaking recently on The Drew Barrymore Show, he previously told the actress: “Thank God for Harry Potter. I tell you, the two — Batman and Harry Potter — really, they saved me, because it meant that I could do the least amount of work for the most amount of money and then be home with the kids.”
Gary first appeared as Sirius Black in Harry Potter series in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The film was released in 2004 and he later reprised his role in two more of the films. However, his character’s last appearance came in the 2007 movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
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Warner Brothers)
In the podcast, Gary joked that his character shouldn’t have been written out so early. He continued: “We [the cast] were all taking bets [on which character would die], you know, it’s Hagrid, and I was there going, no, no, no, maybe it’s Ron. And then you kind of open the script and you go, it’s me. I’m out of here.”
The Oscar winner also confessed to being a perfectionist when it came to his trade. He went on: “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s like anything, I think if I sat and watched myself in something and said, ‘My God, I’m amazing’, that would be a very sad day, because you want to make the next thing better… It’s so subjective. It’s such a personal thing that you’re looking at that other people are not seeing…
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“It’s not to disrespect someone who says to me, ‘Oh, I really love you in that movie’, and I’m thinking, ‘I’m terrible in that movie. What are they talking about?’ It’s not that. It’s [that] they’re seeing something else.”
A version of this article was originally published on December 30, 2023
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