the article popped up in a couple of other threads here this past weekend, but here is the bit:
Does Oldman, erstwhile RSC and Royal Court player, hanker after a return to the stage himself?
'I get misty-eyed about it, yeah,' he says. 'And I get offers. And I flirt with it.' He doesn't accept those offers, though, for reasons that are 'sometimes financial. Sometimes it's geographical.' He stops. Behind the whiskers his face is wrinkling. 'I mean, I don't really want to get...' He shifts in his seat. 'My love for acting... I don't really want to get into that. Because it's a whole different... That's a long conversation!' he says with a wry grin.
Might we surmise that your love for acting has... withered? A nod.
'It's withered,' he says with jovial finality. 'Let's just say that it's withered and leave it at that.'
He talks absentmindedly about the filmmakers and actors he loves - Lynne Ramsay, Paddy Considine, Pawel Pawlikowski, Ray Winstone.
'Raymondo's done pretty good,' he says of his Nil by Mouth lead. 'He's in LA at the moment shooting with Spielberg - he's the sidekick in the new Indiana Jones film. I had not seen him for maybe four years. But recently I had a cup of tea with him. He just looked fantastic. He's invincible.'
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Oldman can't go off to these places because he is a single father. He has two young sons, Gulliver, nine, and Charlie, eight, by his third wife, Donya Fiorentino, whom he first met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They endured a messy divorce in 2001. He won custody. (He also has a son, Alfie, 18, by his first wife, Lesley Manville; his short-lived marriage to Uma Thurman was childless.)
The bitter public slanging match served to make him even more wary of the press. This is his first major interview in Britain for some years. Not that he has ever been much into that side of his profession.
'I don't have a publicist. Never had one.' He begins counting off on his fingers the things he doesn't want or do. 'I don't go to premieres. I don't go to parties. I don't covet the Oscar. I don't want any of that. I don't go out. I just have dinner at home every night with my kids. Being famous, that's a whole other career. And I haven't got any energy for it,' he says, the air wheezing out of him, his body sagging.
He looks at me meaningfully.
'There's a saying I picked up from Anthony Hopkins [his co-star in Ridley Scott's Hannibal (2001), in which Oldman played the faceless quadriplegic Mason Verger]: what other people think of me is none of my business. I don't give a f***. You just have to be practical. And your responsibilities change. And when you have kids it all changes. I just don't want to be away. So I have been lucky, extremely lucky, to have sort of landed on the franchise thing.'
The 'franchise thing' is also well paid, which means Oldman - who says he is single right now - can do his part, secure his nice pay cheque, then spend a good chunk of time at home.
'My main focus has been the kids. And I didn't do it in an ideal way with Alfie - I did it as best I could. And I've had a wonderful gift to be able to do it again. Under unusual circumstances,' he says with a waggle of eyebrows.
'But I didn't plan any of this,' he laughs. 'So I've focused on that, and that's what's been fantastic about doing Potter and Batman. And it does require a different kind of approach. It's not emotionally - ah - all-consuming. I can do the work and turn it on, turn it off. And that's allowed me to be with the kids. I want to [direct] more movies but primarily that's why there hasn't been a movie since Nil by Mouth.'
He says, 'Don't get me wrong, I've had a great career and I'm very lucky to do what I do. But I've been doing it a long time, and you can get tired. Just like anybody.' He's very quiet again, barely audible. 'You might say, "I want to change careers or I want to do something else..." But,' he repeats, 'it's given me a great life.'
Tony Scott thinks we shouldn't set too much store by Oldman's seeming disenchantment with acting. The director has known him for a while.
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Well, it's a sad day indeed. It seems that the movie gods are calling time on my all-time favourite actor, Gary Oldman's career (can't you guys take Lindsay Lohan instead?) after he hinted that he is pretty close to quitting acting, because his love of the craft has 'withered'.
