I'm rarely asked to play the smartest man in the room.
When you play a character that is so emotionally closed there are times when you ask yourself if you are doing enough and if it's reading. That is where you have a director, who is the barometer of what you are doing.
I applaud anything that can take a kid away from a PlayStation or a Gameboy - that is a miracle in itself.
It's funny: I'm a lifelong musician, but because I principally play the piano it's been a solitary thing.
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.
Over the years, I have been asked to play these sort of scary frenetic characters that express their emotions physically.
Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.
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.
Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.
To be honest, I'm a little tired of playing bad guys. I long to do a comedy. But it was fun knocking Indiana Jones around.
I wanted to play Dracula because I wanted to say: 'I've crossed oceans of time to find you.' It was worth playing the role just to say that line.