Gary Oldman ‘put a stop’ to being typecast as the villain: ‘It got old’

Gary Oldman may have a penchant for playing the villain, but nowadays, he prefers to mix things up.

The Oscar-winning actor has embodied pure menace more than once throughout his decades-long career, with roles ranging from the iconic vampire of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to the peacock warlord, Lord Shen, in Kung Fu Panda 2.

“I got sort of typecast for a while,” Oldman shared while looking back on his career for Variety‘s Know Their Lines. “I became kind of like the poster boy for the ‘rent-a-villain.’ Sort of, ‘Oh, we need a villain and we’ll get Gary.'”

He continued, “I don’t know how that happened, but it happened. And it was fun for a while, but actually, I eventually just put a stop to it. It got a little old. But they are fun to play.”

Oldman shared that he especially had fun when it came to over the top antagonists, such as Dr. Zachary Smith in Lost in Space and Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element.

“They’re comic villains,” he explained. “[Lost in Space] was fun, great cast. I thought the story, it was a lot to put in. It was a lot of movie in two hours. But [Dr. Zachary Smith] was fun to play because it’s a villain with a tongue in the cheek or a little twinkle in the eye. It’s bigger than life.”

As for Zorg, Oldman said it was a “fun” role — even though he wasn’t crazy about the physical transformation. “I didn’t like the haircut much. Or the rubber,” he admitted. “Bruce [Willis] didn’t like the rubber either. It was a very hot and sweaty affair.”

Oldman also played the villain in films including True Romance, Air Force One, Léon: The Professional, and Hannibal. But these days, he’s a hero (of sorts) over on AppleTV+’s spy thriller, Slow Horses.

“Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses is the gift that keeps on giving,” Oldman said of the role. “It’s nice to be involved with something that’s got pedigree. It’s a quality show. We do our best really every season to make it as good as if not better than the previous season.”

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That said, Oldman’s Jackson Lamb is far from a typical protagonist. He’s a cynical, jaded MI5 agent on the tail end of his career. 

“He’s a drinker and a smoker and he’s a belcher — and all of those wonderful things, really, that make him so adorable,” Oldman previously told Entertainment Weekly‘s Awardist podcast. “The redeeming thing about him is that he’s incredibly loyal, he’s very smart, has been and is still very, very good at the job.”

In a way, Lamb is the best of both worlds: Oldman gets to toss out brutal one-liners, and still save the day in the end.

Slow Horses returns for season 5 on Sept. 24. Watch Oldman look back on his various roles in the video above.