Gary Oldman explains why he turned down the role of Edward Scissorhands, a cult role he regretted almost immediately…
As we told you recently, before Johnny Depp obtained the cult role of Edward in Edward Scissorhands, many actors were considered to play the character. The first was Tom Cruise, who was however dismissed after asking too many questions considered irrelevant. The search to find the one who would play the hero then continued with Jim Carrey, John Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., William Hurt and even Michael Jackson. Tom Hanks and Gary Oldman were also part of the lot but both rejected the offer: the first to star in the film The Bonfire of the Vanities and the second because he found the story insane!
Indeed, in an interview with Larry King in 2016, Gary Oldman detailed his career and the little regrets he had along the way. One of the questions asked was about roles the actor had turned down.
“Have you ever regretted something you refused?” asked Larry King has Gary Oldmanwho sat alongside Kevin Costner during the interview.
“I refused several things. I can’t say I ‘regret’ but I couldn’t mention them”, he replied. “I can tell you a story: They were interested in me, many years ago, for Edward Scissorhands. And I read the script and I was like, ‘This is ridiculous. A castle at the end of this road, then a representative from Avon comes to sell makeup and this kid has scissor hands. That’s crazy ! I do not understand at all.’ And I ended up not doing it. I don’t even think I went to meet them. I just said [à mes agents que] ‘it’s not for me, I don’t understand.’”
Gary Oldman has followed : “Johnny Depp and Tim Burton were also relatively unknown at that time, and that was kind of an unknown thing too.”
In fact, it is ultimately Johnny Depp who landed the role of the romantic outcast, created by a scientist (Vincent Price) who died before being able to complete his work. Thus, Edward, his first name, finds himself with scissors for hands. He will live alone until Peg (Dianne Wiest) discovers him and welcomes him into her suburban home where he falls in love with her daughter (Winona Ryder) and faces ostracism from the family. community.
Gary Oldman Did he finally realize what he had been missing? The answer is yes !
“I went to watch the movie and the camera pans over these multi-colored houses in this sort of suburban neighborhood, and then you see this sort of Dracula’s castle on the hill… After two minutes [de film], I was like, ‘Yeah, I get it.’ Got it. I understood too late.”
Hear him talk about it in the video below:
It is interesting to imagine an alternative universe in which Gary Oldman would have starred in the film and become Tim Burton’s muse. But the career of Gary Oldman certainly did not suffer from this little regret, he who has since played characters just as cult as Edward, including Dracula in the film of the same name by Francis Ford Coppola from 1992, the adored Sirius Black from the Harry Potter saga or even Jim Gordon from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy.
Without forgetting the roles which gave him his three Oscar nominations, including one victory: that of George Smiley in The Mole by Tomas Alfredson in 2012, that of Winston Churchill in The Dark Hours of Joe Wright in 2018 for which he won the award for best actor, and finally that of Herman Mankiewicz in David Fincher’s Mank in 2021. More recently, he was also seen in the highly acclaimed Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan in the role of Harry Truman.
Gary Oldman can currently be seen in Apple’s spy and thriller series, Slow Horses, opposite Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas and Olivia Cooke, available on Apple TV+.
Edward Scissorhands can be rediscovered in streaming on Disney+.
