Gary Oldman, who starred in four of the eight Harry Potter films as Sirius Black, has said he believes his acting in the role is “mediocre.”
The 65-year-old appeared on a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast and told host Josh Horowitz he believes if he had read the books as he was playing Sirius and knew how the story would have played out, he would have done things differently. The Hollywood actor mentioned Alan Rickman and his knowledge of how Severus Snape’s storyline would end, and wished he had followed the late star’s lead.
Gary Oldman says his Harry Potter performance was ‘mediocre’
In the movies, Oldman portrays Surius, an ill-fated wizard who was a friend of Harry’s parents and is later revealed to be the teen’s godfather. Sirius was wrongly implicated in the deaths of Lily and James Potter, despite having nothing to do with their murder.
Oldman explained: “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, the wizard films aren’t his only performance he is critical of as he said if he could say his performance in a TV show or film was “amazing” it would be a “very sad day.”
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He said: “It’s so subjective. It’s such a personal thing that you’re looking at that other people are not seeing.… 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.”
Harry Potter films ‘saved’ the actor during tough divorce
Around the time he was cast in his first Potter installment, the celebrity was going through a divorce and fighting for custody of his two sons. This meant he couldn’t travel abroad much for productions and found things “hard” at the time. However, things started to look up when he secured the role of Sirius “Padfoot” Black.
The TV and film star explained: “At 42 years old, I woke up divorced and I had custody of [my] boys. That, in itself, was… that was hard because there was a shift in the industry where a lot of productions were being [filmed in] Hungary, Budapest, Prague, Australia, you know, all of these places. So, I turned down a lot of work.
“Thank God for ‘Harry Potter. 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.”
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