Why Gary Oldman thinks his performance in the Harry Potter movies was ‘mediocre’

The hardest part for Gary Oldman in his "Harry Potter" role was lying down on the job.

The Oscar winner, who played wizard Sirius Black in the "Harry Potter" franchise, spoke with host Josh Horowitz on the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast about the hardest stage direction of his 41-year film career.

While he said he didn't remember the specific "Harry Potter" movie it was in, it most likely was a scene in "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" where Harry saves his godfather Sirius Black from dementors at a frozen lake.

"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," Oldman said. "There was like a frozen lake, and I'm sort of dead and my soul is leaving my body and then it appears."

What seemed like a simple direction became a test of endurance.

"It was just me laying down, but it took forever," he said. "It was slow. You'd be on a scene for a week, when normally you can shoot this in two days."

Oldman, 65, said the filmmakers built a lake inside a studio and froze the water for the scene.

"I had to just lie there for a week, day in and day out, doing nothing," he said. "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. And then day three, you go, 'My neck is killing me in this position,' and they'd put a little pillow underneath. The hardest thing I had to do was lie next to a frozen lake."

Oldman then also joked about his character's demise in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."

"They killed me off too early," he said. "I'm still upset about that. We were all taking bets (about which characters would die first).

"You open the script and you go, it's me. I'm outta here."

Oldman then had a blunt assessment of his performance across the three hit movies.

"I think my work is mediocre in it," he said. "No, I do. I don't know, maybe if I had read the books like (co-star) Alan (Rickman), if I got ahead of the curve. If I had known what's coming, I honestly think I would've played it differently."

He then said he would revise history on his entire decorated career.

"I'd put it all on a fire and burn it and do it all again," he said.

Oldman then expanded on that view of his work.

"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 scene better," he said. "It's so subjective, it's such a personal thing that you're looking at that other people are not seeing."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com