Gary Oldman names the ‘noisy’ director who yelled at him on set

The Dark Knight and Dracula star Gary Oldman has named the “noisy” director who yelled at him on set.

Answering a question on what the worst note he received from a director was, the Academy Award winner confirmed he was “screamed” at by one. Some guesswork from the interviewer got the name of said director out of Oldman, who then told the story of the “noisy” director. He claimed: “I’ve had directors scream at me. Once in films.” After the interviewer suggested Oliver Stone was one of the directors who had yelled at Oldman, the Slow Horses star replied: “Yeah. We’ll leave it there. Yeah, Oliver Stone, he did. He could be a bit noisy sometimes.”

Stone and Oldman worked with one another on JFK, the Academy Award-winning movie from 1991. Stone was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, though he lost out to Silence of the Lambs in both categories.

Oldman has heaped plenty of praise onto Stone, the director behind hits like Platoon and Natural Born Killers. The star, who won an Academy Award for his work as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, called Stone a “force of nature” who was inspired by Oldman’s work.

Recalling his job on State of Grace, the crime thriller from 1990, Oldman claimed it was his performance in the Phil Joanou and Michael Lee Baron-directed film that led to him being cast in JFK. Oldman portrayed Lee Harvey Oswald in Stone’s adaptation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Oldman said: “I had a great time working with him. Oliver saw me in State of Grace and that’s what convinced him to cast me as Oswald. He said he saw an ‘intensity’ and ‘haunted quality’ in my character and wanted Oswald to have that same sort of withdrawn, haunted quality. I remember I was very isolated on that shoot, didn’t hang out with anyone.

“I stayed in my hotel room on my own, ate on my own, walked around town on my own. There’s a part of me that is that, a loner.” Oldman went on to call Stone a “brilliant” director whose “energy is just enviable.”

Speaking to Venice Magazine, Oldman said: “He’s a force of nature. Brilliant. Self-destructive. He might want to watch that, curb that a bit. Great vision. Angry. Good. He’s good. His energy is just enviable. A powerhouse. I had a great time working with him.”

Later in the interview, he compared fellow actor Ray Winstone to Stone, calling him “Hurricane Ray”. He said: “Oliver Stone, ditto. (laughs) Please see the above! We called him ‘Hurricane Ray.’

“Before I became an actor, I remember seeing Ray in Scum, had never worked with him, never met him and I was writing that character and had no face for him, really. I had a face, you know: red and puffy, and toxic. A toxic person. Then I thought, who could play this? Then I thought of Ray, with a few pounds on him.”