My passion and energy get mistaken for anger.
Reality TV to me is the museum of social decay.
Sometimes directors feel like they have to justify that hat that they are wearing they’ve got on as a director, and they come in and they tweak and interfere.
In the past, I’ve had my share of good reviews, but it’s always the crazy, scary, weirdo guy. I don’t even know how it happened. Look at me. I mean, when I’m naked, I look like a bald chicken. How did I get to be a scary bad guy?
Whats fascinating is that when you write a script, its almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but youre not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.
I went and lived in Chicago for a year, and I studied at the police academy.
I enjoy playing characters where the silence is loud.
And of course I’ve got kids of my own now, and they love me being in the Harry Potter films. I’m now part of a phenomenon. You become incredibly cool to your kids, and you get a young fan base. So you became the cool dad at school. You’re suddenly hip.
You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.
The script is your map of the world, isn’t it? And if someone knows that if it’s well-written, you get all of the beats, it will tell you everything you need to know.
It’s always hard when you’re playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There’s a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone’s idea of that.
We’re given a code to live our lives by. We don’t always follow it, but it’s still there.
Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you’re really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.
How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand.
Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.
I did have a knack for playing weirdos. There’s still sort of this perception of me out there as being this crazy guy.
You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it’s Gary Oldman crying; it’s not the character crying.
Speaking very generally, I find that women are spiritually, emotionally, and often physically stronger than men.
I don’t think Hollywood knows what to do with me. I would imagine that when it comes to romantic comedies, my name would be pretty low down on the list.
I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano.