The Darkest Hour: Gary Oldman on his favourite scene

Gary Oldman got candid with Drew Barrymore as he joined her CBS talk show, revealing that he had alternative motives for taking on his starring roles as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter franchise, and detective Jim Gordon in the Dark Knight trilogy.

A few years before either project started, the London-born star was going through his third divorce, which became a bitter battle between him and Donya Fiorentino after a four-year-long marriage.

It also saw the actor getting custody of his two sons, Gulliver and Charlie, but Gary claimed on the show that being “a single dad” had left him in a tricky situation as he tried to continue his Hollywood career.

He explained on The Drew Barrymore Show: “Thank God for Harry Potter, I tell you, the two (Batman and Harry Potter) really, they saved me.

“It meant that I could do the least amount of work for the most amount of money and then be home with the kids.”

The 65-year-old noted that the “shift in the industry” at the time meant he had actually turned down a number of roles because they were being filmed miles away from home, in the likes of Budapest and Australia.

Turning to her audience, the host cheekily noted this industry-wide move was “for tax reasons”.

However, the roles that “saved” Gary still took a toll on the star, as he revealed that filming the first Batman he worked on in 2005 took 27 round trips from Los Angeles to London, with the actor immediately heading off to the airport as soon as Christopher Nolan yelled cut.

Gary explained: “I would go home for three days, come back for two, go home for a weekend, come back for a day, go home for a week, come back for four days.”

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It was all worth it in the end for the father-of-three as he didn’t want his children “brought up by a nanny”.

The actor also shares his eldest son, Alfie, with his first wife Lesley Manville.

He is currently married to his fifth wife, photographer Gisele Schmidt, who has a son from a previous marriage that Gary lovingly embraces as his own child too.

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