Slow Horses Star Gary Oldman Breaks Down Difference Between Playing Real & Fictional Characters

Throughout his storied career, Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman has brought countless characters to life, many of them real people and many of them pure fiction. From Dracula, Commissioner Gordon, and Sirius Black to UK Leader Winston Churchill, Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, and JFK’s Lee Harvey Oswald, he has a lot of experience in crafting performances where the basis is either reality or just his imagination. Speaking with ComicBook.com in an interview for his new Apple TV+ series Slow Horses (where he plays a fictional character), we asked Oldman about the difference in playing these two types of characters and his answer may surprise you.

“Well with a real life character, if you take someone like Joe Orton (from 1987’s Prick Up Your Ears), even Oswald,  there are family members who are still around. So you with a fictional character you can take it, you’re at liberty, you have the freedom to take it places. You could get a fictional character and decide to have, I don’t know, orange hair and do things with it that you have the freedom to do. When you when you’re playing a real life character or someone who has lived, I think there’s a certain obligation that you have towards the family of the people who are still around. I feel that there’s a sense of responsibility. I mean when we were doing Darkest Hour, there was one day when I think it was 17 or 18 of the Churchill family came to the set and, you know you want to do them proud.”

He continued, “But I felt that that’s been, that may be a responsibility I’ve taken on and is, you know,  maybe it really doesn’t matter. But I do, I do feel you can go places with a fictional character that can’t necessarily (do elsewhere).”

Oldman’s strategy almost certainly holds water though as two of his three Academy Award nominations have come from playing real-life figures (winning for Churchill in Darkest Hour). One of the actor’s next projects will be Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film Oppenheimer, which he says he will only be seen in one scene. It’s unclear who he’ll be playing in that film but considering the basis it’s likely he’ll added another real-life figure to his resume very soon.

Oldman can be seen on Slow Horses, based on the novels written by Mick Herron, streaming now on Apple TV+.