'Britain has always had spies and I think we spy very well': Gary Oldman on playing George Smiley



The actor on playing the world-weary British spy, modern-day surveillance, growing up on a council estate and out-of-control drinking

'We have a rather romantic view of it (spying) and (John) le Carré was the first to really show the reality,' said Gary Oldman of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

When Gary Oldman learned that he would be playing world-weary British spy George Smiley, he knew the best research would be to ask a real spy what the Cold War was like. The man he asked spent six years, from 1958 to 1964, tapping phone lines, stealing information and running secret agents for both MI5 and MI6. He was David Cornwell, better known as John le Carré.



‘Britain has always had spies and I think we’ve spied rather well,’ says Oldman, 53. ‘But we have a rather romantic view of it and le Carré was the first to really show the reality.



‘He told me that you would be given an assignment and go to Russia or to Czechoslovakia. You would be sent to watch someone. You would be in some miserable little room with a fake ID, and it would be very lonely and often very boring. He said that the terror of having your cover blown was exhausting: you were always waiting for the footsteps on the stairs. I guess that’s why so many of them hit the bottle.’

Oldman was once a destructively heavy drinker himself and, like Smiley, has a rocky marital history. The intensity he brings to the role of Smiley might surprise anyone more used to the cool, calm Alec Guinness in the Seventies TV adaptation.



We meet twice. The first time on set in north London. Oldman is dressed in an old-fashioned pair of grey striped pyjamas, waiting to do a scene where Smiley gets a late-night visit. The first thing he wants to show me is Smiley’s glasses – for which he tried and rejected more than 100 pairs.



‘For me, Smiley’s glasses are as iconic as the Aston Martin in the James Bond films, so I had to get them right,’ he says.



‘The book refers to Smiley cleaning his glasses on his tie. Having met him, I get the feeling that comes directly from le Carré. I sense that Smiley is very personal to him, that it’s somewhat autobiographical.’ Oldman says he even uses le Carré’s voice when playing Smiley. ‘But I never told him.’

Gary as George Smiley in the new film. Alec Guinness (right) in the role in 1979



The second encounter, several months later, is at the Soho Hotel, where he’s just seen a rough cut of the finished film. Like le Carré, he has given fewer and fewer interviews over the years. I expect a difficult encounter, but today he’s articulate and thoughtful. Since playing Smiley, he’s been thinking a lot about surveillance, trust and betrayal.



‘Actually, I noticed it on this trip to London,’ he says. ‘I was in the car, idly looking around, and it was like, my God! There are thousands of cameras watching us. How on earth did that happen? I don’t remember any debate about whether we should have all this surveillance. Maybe, had we been aware, we could have avoided it.’



He adds, however, that technology has radically altered the world of espionage.

‘When le Carré was writing this story there was a sort of rather quaint English way of thinking: “Oh no – an Old Etonian couldn’t possibly be a traitor.” The idea that deception and betrayal could completely turn the British intelligence service inside out was a novelty then. Not so much today. That’s a good thing, at the end of the day. An uninformed public is bad. We should know what’s going on.



Now our agents are desperately trying to infiltrate terrorist groups, government secrets are posted online, hackers attack computer systems via cyberspace…



‘We have WikiLeaks – and the next step is that they’ll go after and expose the corporate world, and it’ll be fascinating to see how that impacts on the big corporations’ political agendas. There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn’t have got Osama bin Laden – it took us years, but it happened.’



On Sid and Nancy: 'I read the script and thought it was a load of rubbish'

Oldman has lived in LA since the Nineties – a long way from his roots on a council estate in south London. His father, Leonard, a welder, left his mother, Kathleen, when he was seven. Nil By Mouth, the film written and directed by Oldman in 1997, was a semi-autobiographical account of his childhood, with Ray Winstone playing an abusive, alcoholic father. Was that how it was for him?

‘Nil By Mouth was a bit autobiographical, but as I always pointed out at the time, that’s not my dad,’ he says.



‘However, there were people who lived like that and people who still do. We lived in a flat that you could pretty much fit in my current kitchen. No wonder people drink! I can’t understand why they don’t throw themselves off the balconies.



‘They condensed hundreds of families, all that energy and frustration, and in some cases violence and dysfunction, into these tower blocks. I don’t know how people did it. But we did. I was one of those kids who watched and listened – I didn’t miss a trick. It all went in.’



In 1986 he was offered the chance to play Sid Vicious in Sid And Nancy and nearly turned it down.



‘I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown. I read the script and thought it was a load of rubbish. But my agent said, “They’re offering £35,000.” I was getting £80 a week at the Royal Court at the time and I thought “I could do with a flat…” It changed my life overnight.’



He played Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears, then went to America and delivered a string of searing performances in films ranging from Tarantino’s True Romance to Coppola’s Dracula. He played Sirius Black in four Harry Potter films, including the final instalment, which is released this week. Daniel Radcliffe sees Oldman as a role model.

Did he give the young actor any help?

‘Yes – I helped him learn guitar. Between takes I taught him the Beatles’ Come Together – it has a great bass line. Daniel’s a lovely lad. When we did The Prisoner Of Azkaban he said to me, “I’m going away for the weekend. I’m going to this girl’s house and I really like her.”



'It might have been his first real girlfriend. He was sleeping over; obviously her parents were there, but Daniel said, “I’m quite excited. Have you got any advice?” He was 13 or so – we still laugh about that. I saw him about a year ago and we had a cup of tea together. He’s got good people around him.’



The same could not be said of Oldman when he first went to LA. Before long his drinking was out of control.



Gary played Sirius Black in four Harry Potter films. Daniel Radcliffe sees him as a role model

‘I didn’t do drugs. It wasn’t my thing. But the drink was terrible,’ he says. ‘Today when I look back, it’s like I was another person. You could call it a coping mechanism, but that would be an excuse. I just drank too much.’



He has been sober for 15 years now.



‘You have a couple of goes at it and you put a couple of years together, and then you put three years together, and then, nearly 15 years ago, I had what AA calls “a convincer” – which made me realise that I couldn’t do it any more. I went out drinking for about 70 hours here in London. At the end I knew I was done.’



Four times married – the second time to Uma Thurman – he is content in America with his current wife, Alexandra Edenborough, an English jazz singer.



He has four sons – Alfie, 23, from his first marriage; Roberto, 19, whom he adopted with Isabella Rossellini; and Gulliver, 13, and Charlie, 12, from marriage No 3. Would he relinquish his UK citizenship?

‘I’m still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent – you get contaminated after so long.’



Fatherhood has changed him.



‘At 23 it was all about acting. Today it’s getting my kids to school, making sure that they’ve done their homework. I’m in my fifties, and I’m turning into a square. I saw a kid walk into a restaurant the other day and his belt was below his backside. I would have turned him away.’



But he’s not about to join the politically correct brigade, which, he says, is on the back foot.



‘You notice it with things like the success of Mad Men – which I think is one of the greatest series I’ve ever seen. We have a yearning for that time. Political correctness has become a straightjacket. It’s refreshing to watch people drinking and smoking and using phone boxes! Tinker, Tailor also has that feel. I want to be in that world.



‘The real le Carré junkies might feel it’s not the full meal, but I think it works very well. At first I lamented the loss of a lot of MI6 jargon – lamplighters (surveillance experts) and ferrets (technicians). But I think in a two-hour film it would have been confusing to some people. It’s a less cosy, English affair. It’s a little sexier, more contemporary, less nostalgic than the TV series; crueller. It’s still set in the Cold War period, but it has an edge.’



Has le Carré seen it?



‘I spoke to him on the phone after he’d watched the film. He loved it. As he so eloquently put it, “We’ve turned the cow into an Oxo cube.” And I think we’ve done it very well.’

‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ is released on September 16

