Gary Oldman Didn’t Like His ‘Harry Potter’ Performance Because He Rarely Likes His Performances
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Gary Oldman said he did not mean to “disparage” any Harry Potter fans when he called his portrayal of Sirius Black in the film adaptations “mediocre” — he only meant to disparage himself.
“What I meant by that was, as any artist or any actor or painter, you are always hypercritical of your own work,” Oldman said when asked about his comments at a Cannes press conference promoting his new movie, Parthenope. “If you’re not, and you’re satisfied with what you’re doing — that would be death to me. If I watched a performance of myself and thought, ‘My God, I’m fantastic in this,’ that would be a sad day. Because my best work is next year.”
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Oldman made his initial comments on the Happy Sad Confused podcast and essentially said the exact same thing about never wanting to be too satisfied with his work (and not wanting to “disrespect someone” who really loved him in the Potter films). That said, he also discussed his preparation for the films and admitted he probably could’ve put in a bit more work reading the source material, like his co-star Alan Rickman.
Oldman elucidated that point a bit more at Cannes, noting that even if he had read more, there was only so much he could’ve read. Oldman’s first appearance in the Potter franchise was 2004’s The Prisoner of Azkaban; at the start of production in early 2003, J.K. Rowling had only published the first four books in the series, with book five arriving in June of that year.
“There was such secrecy that was shrouded around the novels, they were under lock and key,” Oldman said. “And had I known from the very beginning, if I had read the five books and I had seen the arc of the character, I might have approached it differently. I may have looked at it differently and painted in a different color.”
He added: “It’s not me looking at the movie and saying it’s a terrible film, or I’m terrible. I just wish it had been under different circumstances. That’s what I meant, not to be rude to any of the people out there who like that film.”
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