Actor Gary Oldman takes on Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton in expletive-laced Playboy interview

[scarletwoman]

27. First off, Gary Oldman is a Brit. So frankly, I don't get why he's spouting off about U.S. politics.

Last edited Tue Jun 24, 2014, 08:56 PM - Edit history (1)

But he's been living in the U.S. since sometime in the early 90s, so I guess he somehow feels entitled to expressing his opinion about our politicians. Too bad.

I'm saddened to see this, since I've long considered him one of the most brilliant actors ever.

This comes down to the longstanding dilemma of whether one can separate the personal character of the artist from his/her body of art. I think of Jon Voigt as a particularly salient example of this - I will always appreciate his indelible performance in "Midnight Cowboy" - and no amount of knowing that he's a thoroughly right wing nut job will ever change my appreciation of that.

And as someone who was involved in theater in my younger years, I came across more instances than I can count of actors who performed exquisitely in roles as upright, honorable, appealing characters who were absolute jerks when you got to know them in real life. Actors are chameleons, and so many of them can take on all sorts of personas without in the least being anything like those personas in their true selves.

So, I'm sorry to find out that Gary Oldman is apparently one of those jerks - but I can't be surprised by it. I'll still appreciate his brilliance as an actor.

Edited to fix a glaring error - I originally cited Nick Nolte instead of Jon Voigt as the star of Midnight Cowboy. My thanks to the poster below who pointed out my error!