Gary Oldman

I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can’t really move from it: it’s on buses, in stores, it’s everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.

How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles’ faces on it. It would be a collector’s item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.

People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can’t get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.

Rather like Batman, I embody the themes of the movie which are the values of family, courage and compassion and a sense of right and wrong, good and bad and justice.

I wasn’t ever a huge fan of comics. Just not one of those kids, you know?

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

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.

Shakespeare doesn’t really write subtext, you play the subtext.

Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director’s hat is only trying to justify his position.

Speaking very generally, I find that women are spiritually, emotionally, and often physically stronger than men.

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.

If one could have a wish, or an alternative life, I would’ve liked to have been John Lennon.

Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that.

Interesting things come your way but as you get older, your lifestyle changes. I don’t want to travel; I don’t want to be in a hotel room away from my family.

People have an idea that one is in control of a career, a lot more than you really are. You can engineer things to an extent. But you are at the mercy of what comes in across the desk.

I’m not the best audience for that because I’m not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that.

So Harry Potter came in and it is nice that I have kids of the right age. I took them to London and they walked around the set and met Harry Potter and that is thrilling.

I hadn’t worked for a couple of years so I thought it would be nice to earn some money and pay the bills.

I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano.

What’s fascinating is that when you write a script, it’s almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you’re not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

My passion and energy get mistaken for anger.

But you see, I have played more good guys than I have played villains.

It’s becoming increasingly harder and harder; there’s no such thing as independent film anymore. There aren’t any, they don’t exist. In the old days you could go and get a certain amount of the budget with foreign sales, now everybody wants a marketable angle.

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.

It’s always hard when you’re playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There’s a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone’s idea of that.