Quotes from Gary Oldman

People who know me, they know I have a sense of humor, I'm a bit of a joker, a bit of a clown really, and I would love someone to exploit that side of me and send me a romantic comedy.

My passion and energy get mistaken for anger.

I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up at sometimes. I don't drink anymore but my alcoholic head occasionally says different. 'Nil By Mouth' was a love letter to my father because I needed to resolve some issues in order to be able to forgive him.

My favorite meal would have to be good old-fashioned eggs, over easy, with bacon. Many others, but you can't beat that on a Sunday morning, especially with a cup of tea.

Well, I needed the work - that's the honest answer. I haven't worked for a while, a couple of years. So I thought it would be nice to get back to work and earn some money.

You can play older than yourself. You can play younger than yourself up to a point, and then that just becomes impossible because you carry a weight with you that you can't shift, unless you have very boyish looks.

People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can't get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.

You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.

It's funny: I'm a lifelong musician, but because I principally play the piano it's been a solitary thing.

I love the simple poetry of theater, where you can stand in a spotlight on a stage and wrap a coat around you, and say, 'It was 1860 and it was winter...'

I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long.

People have an idea that one is in control of a career, a lot more than you really are. You can engineer things to an extent. But you are at the mercy of what comes in across the desk.

At 23 it was all about acting. Today it's getting my kids to school, making sure that they've done their homework. I'm in my fifties, and I'm turning into a square.

Reality TV to me is the museum of social decay.

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it's a constitution that's the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it's the most generous nation in the world.

There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn't have got Osama bin Laden - it took us years, but it happened.

I'm almost incapable of lying. I'd be a terrible spy.

To be able to do this job in the first place you've got to have a bit of an ego.

I can't imagine childhood without 'Planet of the Apes.' I was nine or ten when the first one came out.

Speaking very generally, I find that women are spiritually, emotionally, and often physically stronger than men.

I know what it means to do a job... I worked in a factory. I respect people in the service industry. What irritates me more is when people aren't respectful. There's a lot of nonsense behavior, especially in a place like Hollywood. The money, the power, they create little monsters.

I never told my father I loved him before he died, and I have a lot of issues about that. They're all swimming around in my head, in my heart, unresolved, and in a way it felt fitting to dedicate the film to him.

I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can't really move from it: it's on buses, in stores, it's everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.

It's becoming increasingly harder and harder; there's no such thing as independent film anymore. There aren't any, they don't exist. In the old days you could go and get a certain amount of the budget with foreign sales, now everybody wants a marketable angle.