Gary Oldman Tells Us Heath Deserves an Oscar
In an interview this week Sheila Roberts our LA wonder writer spoke to Gary Oldman about working on The Dark Knight and specifically with Heath Ledger who passed on during the filming, may he RIP. You will be able to read the entire interview later in the week but in the meantime we wanted to highlight his comments on working with Heath Ledger. Earlier Christian Bale praised Heath in an interview on ReelComix ( Christian Bale Dark Knight Interview ). Christian Bale praised Heath in the interview telling them;
Heath Ledger completely immersed himself. He stayed in character. When he was the Joker, he was the Joker throughout. He had an absolute commitment to that. He has portrayed the Joker in a way that has not been portrayed before. He has this punk, clockwork orange approach to it. He did such a damn good job that if Chris decides to make a third movie he has created a real challenge of how do you up the ante with any villain after Heath's portrayal of the joker.
True to what Christian said Gary Oldman thinks that Heath Ledger is an actor who went at subsonic speed and delivered land mark performances;
I think there's certain - Actors go along - really good actors, as Heath was, go along and they have good careers it's like they're sort of traveling at subsonic speed, and occasionally they go through the sound barrier. You can think of people like Jack Nicholson in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” Al Pacino in “Dog Day Afternoon”…There's certain landmark performances where you just think that they just fly. And Heath has done that here. He's just tuning in to a radio station - he's got a frequency that none of us can hear. It was like he found something. And I knew it was special the first day I worked with him. I called a friend and they said “How is it?” and I said “It's good, it's good,” and they said “How's Heath as The Joker” and I said “He's going to be sensational. You can tell already.” How good he turned out to be is beyond my expectation, really.
People talk about the intensity of someone like Christian. And I've heard someone say “Christian's a method actor.” Well, Christian's still alive. [pause] I mean, Heath, in between takes, would laugh and joke and sit down on the curb and have a cigarette and talk about Matilda. And I think it's just the sort of thing that everybody wants to go “Oh, it's the role. It drove him…” You'd have to be neurologically fucking mental, you'd have to have a disorder to play a part and let it affect you so much that you can't sleep and that you - you know what I mean? Don't you think? People want a darker story than there really is, because my experience of him, and I don't know if he had substance abuse in the past, and people talk about partying and the stuff he used to do, but I was never witness to that. I worked with a sweet kid who had such a heart, who was a lovely guy. I worked with this guy who was completely committed to the role and the work, wanted more than anything to be taken seriously as an actor. He was on time, he knew the lines, and he was a nice kid.
It leads to the question is Heath Ledger deserving of an oscar and in Gary Oldmans mind without a question he is.
Yeah, I think so. I think the Academy tend to overlook movies like this, they somehow seem to don't take it so seriously because it just doesn't fall into their thing. They don't tend to look at work in movies like this. But in this case I think the acting is so good, I think his performance is so good, I think it's going to be very hard to avoid it. So he could be the first - who was the last guy? From “Network?”
Check back later for Sheila's entire interview with Gary Oldman which will include lots more on Gary's work on The Dark Knight.
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