Gary Oldman has starred in numerous box-office successes, including Dracula, the Harry Potter films, the Dark Knight trilogy, and Oppenheimer. But he almost starred in one more: 1990's Edward Scissorhands. He was on "a small list" of candidates for the lead role that eventually went to Johnny Depp, and "my agent thought I had a really good chance of getting it," the British actor, newly knighted by King Charles III, tells The Hollywood Reporter in a new interview. "I read this quirky, strange little script, and I didn't get it," he adds, noting he didn't then have Tim Burton's full body of work for context—so he passed on the role. Once the film was completed, Oldman says he only had to watch two minutes to understand what the film was all about. "I went, 'I get it!'" he says, but it was then far too late.
The 67-year-old actor, now spouting insulting humor in the Apple TV+ thriller Slow Horses, isn't grumbling. "Really I've just had diabolical good luck," he says. "For the most part, I've worked consistently as an actor, and that is extraordinary." If he hadn't gotten sober 28 years ago, things might've turned out differently. At one point, "I didn't think I could've gone 28 seconds without a drink," he says. "Going at the rate I was going, I wouldn't be sitting here with you by now. I'd either be dead or institutionalized." Growing up, the people he admired in literature, film, theater, music, and athletics "were all sorts of drunks and drug addicts," he says, so that when he began taking part in drinking as a social norm, he glamorized the behavior. But "my own life ... is immeasurably better from just not living in a fog."
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