Gary Oldman has revealed that his recurring role as Jackson Lamb in Apple TV+’s Slow Horses has paused the “low frequency anxiety” he usually feels when starting a new job. The 68-year-old actor, who was speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival after receiving the Global Icon Award, said the feeling has been absent for six years.
A welcome pause from self-criticism
Oldman admitted he tends not to watch his own work back because he is “deeply self critical”, and that he still hopes his best work is yet to come. Despite his long list of hits and awards, he said he still experiences anxiety at the start of each new job, asking himself: “Will I be any good? Can I play the role?”
But thanks to Slow Horses, that dread is currently on pause. “I haven’t had that feeling for six years, which has been really nice,” he told Edith Bowman. “You go back and you know it’s been a success - the chemistry is working, there’s the same crew, same make-up, same hair and those wonderful actors. I have to pinch myself with how lucky I am.”
From repertory theatre to Oscar success
Oldman, who now lives in Palm Springs, California with his fifth wife Gisele Schmidt, said he started out with low expectations in repertory theatre. “I wanted to work - bottom line. My heroes were Alan Bennett, Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Alec Guinness, Richard Burton. Then, in the US, Robert de Niro, Al Pacino, Paul Newman. These were the people you revered and looked up to.”
His best-known roles include Sirius Black in the Harry Potter films, Gotham City Police Commissioner Jim Gordon in the Batman movies, Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy, George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the titular vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK. He won the best actor Oscar for playing Sir Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, a role he described as one of the most demanding of his career, with shoots sometimes requiring him to be in the make-up chair as early as 1am before a 12-hour shoot. “The average day was 19 or 20 hours,” he recalled. “I loved every minute but - you’ve got to be committed.”
Finding Jackson Lamb
When he landed the role of Lamb, Oldman had reached a stage in his career where he was desperate to make a long-form TV series, having long been “a little envious” of the likes of I, Claudius and Brideshead Revisited. He asked his long-term friend and manager Douglas Urbanski to find something suitable, specifying that he wanted to use his own accent, have his own hair, wear no prosthetics, and have few or no costume changes.
“I told him I didn’t want any capes, armour or rubber - I’ve done all that,” he laughed. “And I didn’t want many - or any - costume changes. Also I wanted to use my own accent, I’ve done so many different voices. So could you go and find me that?”
Oldman said he enjoys playing Lamb because the character ignores modern health advice. “He eats junk food, he smokes, he’s a borderline alcoholic. He has no filter and he can’t be arsed with the social norms. That’s the fun of it. I think we all wish sometimes we could be a bit more like Lamb.” He described the grubby Mac as “my nod to Columbo”.
The seventh series of Slow Horses has already been ordered, and the sixth starts this autumn on Apple TV+. In the new series, every MI5 reject at Slough House is being targeted by killers, with Louisa Guy (Rosalind Eleazar) returning, and Olivia Cooke’s Sid Baker seemingly returning from the dead.
