Gary Oldman

“I want my weekends off and I want to put my kids to bed. Those are good reasons to want to be in 'Batman 2'.”

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

“I took a bit of a back seat, I had kids and I wanted to focus on them. There's that period in the late '90s, the early 2000s, where I didn't do a great deal.”

“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 applaud anything that can take a kid away from a PlayStation or a Gameboy. That is a miracle in itself.”

“And of course I've got kids of my own now, and they love me being in the Harry Potter films. I'm now part of a phenomenon. You become incredibly cool to your kids, and you get a young fan base. So you became the cool dad at school. You're suddenly hip.”

“Growing up in a particular neighborhood, growing up in a working-class family, not having much money, all of those things fire you and can give you an edge, can give you an anger.”

“Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.”

“I just think political correctness is crap.”

“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.”

“What other people think of me is none of my business.”

“I'm rarely asked to play the smartest man in the room.”

“'Nil By Mouth' was a bit autobiographical, but as I always pointed out at the time, that's not my dad.”

“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.”

“I like a cheese and pickle. Nice cheese and pickle on a real old-fashioned bread. Ploughman's lunch.”

“Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.”

“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.”

“Getting sober was one of the three pivotal events in my life, along with becoming an actor and having a child. Of the three, finding my sobriety was the hardest thing.”

“I was brought up by my mother and my two sisters, although they're older than me and fled the nest very young, so I was technically raised as an only child, but I was very much loved.”

“I was quiet, a loner. I was one of those children where, if you put me in a room and gave me some crayons and a pencils, you wouldn't hear from me for nine straight hours. And I was always drawing racing cars and rockets and spaceships and planes, things that were very fast that would take me away.”