This Is How Gary Oldman Won an Oscar - Talent Is a Lie

Most projects that come in, most of them I turn down. I don't know if it's fear, but it's certainly insecurity. It amuses me that one is nominated for an Oscar and I'm out. A woman sat there knitting. During your audition? Yeah, and another person was sort of looking at papers, sort of smoking a cigarette, and I finished my audition and they just said, well, you know, think about something else to do for a living.

Need motivation? Watch a top 10 with Believe Nation! What's up, it's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see explode out onto the world. So let's get your motivation to a 10 and get you believing in you. Grab a snack and chew on today's lessons from a man who went from being abandoned by his alcoholic father at age 7 to dropping out of school at age 16 to work in a sports shop to becoming an Oscar award-winning actor. He's Gary Oldman, and here's my take on his top 10 rules of success.

Enjoy.

All right, let's kick things off with rule number 1: step out onto the wire.

How did you get your head around playing Winston Churchill? Winston Churchill? Well, like most, most projects that come in Most of them I turn down initially only because I think it's out of— I don't know if it's fear, but it's certainly insecurity, even still. I'm nearly 60. I've been doing it 40 years. And I say to myself, "Why them? They should get someone else." Yeah. You know? And it's nearly always happened with the things that have been— the most challenging, the most rewarding, and the most successful. Yeah, yeah, I've had the same, right? And you could even turn them down more than once, and they seem to wash back up on the shore, and they won't take no for an answer. And then you, then you have to sort of collect and, you know, think, okay, let me think about this. So you're, you're being asked to play. Obviously I have a striking resemblance to Churchill. Clearly, it's obvious. I mean, you must have been related in Must have been, clearly. So it gave me great pause to think, this is ridiculous, I don't look anything like him. It's an incredible role. Yeah. It's the role of a lifetime. It's like Falstaff or being offered King Lear. But I'm sorry, I'm not going to do it. It was my dear friend Douglas and my wife who said, "Come on, you're gonna stand in Parliament and you're gonna say, 'Blood, toil, tears, and sweat, we shall fight them on the—' You know, really?" And I thought, "What's the worst that could happen?" I'd be awful. I'd get over it. We'd move on with our lives. You know, this is not sort of like, uh— So I said yes. And of course, the moment that you step out onto the wire— Yeah. Yeah. And then you're looking at the drop below you. It's not true. Oh, God, it's not true. And then thus it began. Rule number 2: Be prepared. When I arrive on the set, I've done my homework and I'm ready to work. And I've noticed occasionally there are people that think they're a little lazy and that they can wing it. And you've got to be incredibly talented to be able to wing it, you know. But that would be my advice to people. Just be early and ready to work. Rule number 3: Live in the real world.

My career has been—

I've worked out of necessity. I've worked on things that I would have preferred not to work on. But I need to— you've got to live in the real world. And you have kids and responsibility and paying bills like everybody else. When you're young, when I was 20, when I was 20 and I was not a care in the world, you know, it can— I just had such a fixity of purpose and I wouldn't compromise, but you can afford to to when you don't have those other responsibilities. When you're a grown-up and you're in the real world, you've got to, you know, so it's taken me, I've not always been completely in control of the reins of the career. And occasionally there have been times when I can direct it and steer it.

Rule number 4: Be creative.

I'm still a mystery to you, but I know exactly where your white ass is coming from. See, if I ask if you want some dinner and you grab the egg roll and start to chow down, I say to myself, this motherfucker, he's carrying on like he ain't got a care in the world. And who knows, maybe he don't. Maybe this fool's such a bad motherfucker, he don't got to worry about nothing. He just sit down, watch my motherfucker TV. See, you ain't even sat down yet. And that TV over there, since you've been in the room, is a woman with her breasts just hanging out. You ain't even bothered to look. You just been clocking me. I know I'm pretty, but I ain't as pretty as a couple of titties. Oui, oui! This show feels— We were shooting Romeo in New York, and I was late one night in the Bronx, was in the trailer, and I heard a couple of kids outside walking past, and I heard this voice, and I said, "That's the voice for Drexel." And so I got the kid in, I pulled him off the street. And I said, would you do me a favor? I said, would you record your voice for me? And I said, would you read these scenes and you tell me what lines don't work? And then he read them. And he went through the script. And he went, yeah, man. He said, that don't fly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bullshit, you know, he was like doing all this, doing all the thing. I was changing the script.

Rule number 5: Find your moment of clarity.

When did you first realize you were interested in acting? I saw a movie. I was at home one evening and there was a preview came up on the TV and it was a Bryan Ford's movie. With Malcolm McDowell in it called The Raging Moon, but it may have been called something else here. It may not stand the test of time. I have not seen it for 30-something years, but Malcolm McDowell came on and it was like, as alcoholics call it, a sort of moment of clarity. I had a moment of clarity. It was like a light going on, and I thought, I want to do that.

Rule number 6, my personal favorite that I'm gonna be sharing with Alex and Lily, who I'm mentoring, is follow the feeling.

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing bluffs. We shall never surrender. And I recall once hearing you saying that acting is not intellectual, it's feeling. How do you get to that point of feeling your character? The only way I could describe it is, um, you're looking for, for instance, at the way he sounds. And if you listen to the voice and you listen to the speech, he says, "And that's what I started with." He has this slight speech impediment, and there's a lisp to the sound that he makes, and it comes, right, and you hear that it also comes down his nose, and he's got this sort of thing, and he had this sort of thing he did with his mouth and his lip. So you're trying to capture that sensation in the mouth, in the sound. And that's what I mean by feeling it rather than— you can't read a book that could give you that. That you have to work and find it through a sensation. And that's the thing you're trying to sort of capture. So it becomes less about intellect and more about what you're feeling.

Rule number 7: Love the process.

I'm technically out of work at the moment. And I mean, then that's something that you— it's a sea you swim in. You know, you're very— I'm very used to that. And that to me is— it amuses me that one is nominated for an Oscar and I'm out of work, you know. But I can't go and wait a table, can I? You know, it would not— not right now. I'm enjoying it though. I think you've got to You have to embrace it and surrender to it and not— and enjoy it. I think you have to remember to enjoy it.

Rule number 8: Prove them wrong.

Now, is it true that you applied to but were turned down by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art? Yes, I was. Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier, all the, you know, all those, all those guys that won sort of looked up to. They had all had this career that sort of started with the Royal Academy, so it was an obvious place for me to go, to, you know. And I found them very rude. A woman sat there knitting during your audition. Yeah. And another person was sort of looking at papers, sort of smoking a cigarette. And I finished my audition and they just said, well, you know, think about something 'Have you got anything else to do for a living?' 'Do you have anything to fall back on?' And, um, but, uh, so that was a blow. Yeah. It was a blow. But I dusted myself off and, you know, went for it and I got into another school. And have now learned that they are sort of much of a muchness. I mean, you just take— you leave the bad, take the good. And it's about your own commitment. It's about application, really, more than— of course there are great teachers. But I went and I worked very hard. I was the first in my year to get a job, to get an Equity card. But that wasn't— I don't— it wasn't because I was the most talented guy there. I just worked very hard. I wrote the letters. I had my picture taken. Everybody else was kind of, you know, fucking around at the pub. And I was sort of doing the work and taking it seriously.

Rule number 9: Be fully immersed in your craft.

Here's the odd thing. Despite the prosthetics and, you know, the whole get-up, It was the most relaxed and the most free I've ever been. It once— I don't mean this in— I don't mean it in an arrogant way, but once I had done the work and I felt that I had found him, it was like breathing. But I do look at the work I do look at the piece and some moments are really— I didn't preconceive anything. Like, I don't remember doing them. I mean, and I had just a little under a year to prep him. And so all those, the way he would turn his papers and the way he would hold his hand and sort of gestures and things like that became so part of it that I didn't have to think about it. I didn't have to consciously remind myself. You were just in it. I could just be in it. And that was a very freeing thing.

And rule number 10, the last one before the bonus clips, tell great stories.

I did Air Force One with Harrison Ford, and we were on a set which was obviously the aircraft of Air Force One. There were signs everywhere: there was no drinking, no smoking, and no eating on the set. And there was one day when I looked around and Harrison was standing in the doorway beneath the sign that said no smoking, no drinking, and no eating. And he was drinking a coffee, eating a burrito, while smoking a cigar. And he was doing all three.

Now I've got two very special Gary Oldman bonus clips around getting it in your blood and learning to express yourself. But before that, I want to get to the commitment of the day. You watch this video, don't just watch another video. What did you learn from this and how are you going to commit to doing something better in your life or in your business? Leave it down in the comments below, make it public so we can hold you accountable. Thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, I'll see you soon and enjoy the bonus clips.

With Winston, I had— it was a unique experience because it was 10, 11 months that I could work on it. I was thinking about it for over a year. We had 4 weeks rehearsal. So you actually got to physicalize and vocalize the character with the people that you're going to be doing it with. And now I knew that I was off book. I knew the whole script. Yeah, I knew the whole script like a play before I got there. Because it isn't stuff that you can— you can't think about it. You have to kind of know it so well. I'm a big believer it's not how well you know something, it's how long you've known it. Because then it's like part of your blood, it's your DNA, and then you have it, you have it instantly. It's instant recall. Neil by Mouth is an emotional well that I have been drawing on for years. So people say to me, how long did it take to write? And I say, it took 6 weeks, but it was 30 years in development. You know, it has to come— a character, once you've got all those pieces that I was talking about, then you have to filter them through your own particular prism. Then they live through you. I don't express myself with a piano or violin. I'm, you know, the instrument. And so if you see Dracula crying, that's Gary crying. So you're drawing on all that stuff. And that's— so I've been using— I've been using Neil by mouth in a way, that all of that for all those years in the acting. So let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy.

The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon.

Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.