Harry Potter star Gary Oldman slams his ‘mediocre’ performance in the hit franchise

Oscar-winning actor Gary Oldman has delivered a scathing critique of his involvement in the hit franchise.

Gary Oldman slams Harry Potter performance. Picture: Warner Bros.

Gary Oldman is taking issue with his work in the Harry Potter film franchise.

Oldman, who played the role of Sirius Black in four of the series’ eight movies, was discussing his experiences filming the beloved series in a new interview when he admitted, “I think my work is mediocre in it.”

Josh Horowitz spoke with the actor for the Happy Sad Confused podcast, and when he admonished him for the critique, Oldman doubled down, reports Fox News.

“No, I do,” he said. “Maybe if I had read the books like [co-star] Alan [Rickman] … if I’d got ahead of the curve a bit, I would have played … if I’d have known what’s coming, I honestly think I would have played it differently.”

Gary Oldman starred alongside Daniel Radcliffe in the Harry Potter films. Picture: Warner Bros.

Oldman played the role of Sirius Black in four of the series’ eight movies. Picture: Warner Bros.

Earlier in the interview, the subject of fellow Harry Potter star Rickman came up. Rickman, who played the role of Professor Severus Snape in all eight movies, was famously the only actor who had been informed early on of his character’s fate by author J.K. Rowling.

Oldman’s performance in this franchise isn’t the only one of his he dislikes.

“Tons of it,” he said of his work in past movies. “I’d put it all on a fire and burn it and do it all again.”

For example, when asked about his work in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he said he’s “not crazy about it.”

The actor is also not a fan of his performance in the 1992 movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

He continued, “It’s like anything. If I sat and watched myself in something and said, ‘My god, I’m amazing,’ right, that would be a very sad day, because you want to make the next thing better … and it’s so subjective. It’s such a personal thing that you’re looking at that other people are not seeing. It’s not to disrespect someone who says to me, ‘Oh, I really loved you in that movie’ and I’m thinking, ‘I’m terrible in that movie, what are they talking about?’ It’s not that. They’re seeing something else.”

He said that he believes that that level of “nitpicking” one’s own work can be “healthy,” but “you can’t let it debilitate you.”

Oldman confirmed that while he can be critical of himself, he doesn’t beat himself up over past acting choices.

At another point during the conversation, Oldman talked about how one moment in the filming of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, his first film in the series, was “the most difficult thing” he’s ever done in his career.

The British actor says “nitpicking” one’s own work can be “healthy”. Picture: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP

He won the coveted Best Actor Oscar for his role as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour in 2018. Picture: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

“I had to lie by the lake, there was like this frozen lake, and I’m sort of dead, and the soul is leaving my body,” he remembered.

“It was just me laying down, but Harry Potter, they would shoot … it took forever,” he said. “It was slow. You’d be on a scene for a week, we normally could shoot this in two days. But anyway, I was on that … what they did was build this lake inside this studio and they cooled it down and they froze this lake, and I had to just lie there for a week, day in, day out, doing nothing.”

He recalled complaining that he was getting cold, and said a crew member placed a hot water bottle under him, and a couple of days later he received a pillow to put under his neck after complaining about pain there.

He laughed, “The hardest thing I had to do was lie next to a frozen lake.”

This article originally appeared in Fox News and was reproduced with permission

Originally published as Harry Potter star Gary Oldman slams his ‘mediocre’ performance in the hit franchise