„The Most Difficult Thing I Ever Had to Do”. Gary Oldman Admitted That Harry Potter Has Set The Biggest Challenge of His Career
Gary Oldman talked about his experience on the set of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which, it turns out, was the most difficult of his career.
Gary Oldman is a man of many faces, but for Harry Potter fans he will always remain the unforgettable Sirius Black, whose performance moved audiences. Although he wasn’t on screens for too long, he still managed to win the affection of a large number of viewers, who loved his character in the movies as much as in J.K. Rowling's books.
The actor himself has special memories related to this very role, which, he confessed, presented him with the biggest challenge of his career. He told about it while being a guest on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where he mentioned his experience of filming Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the first installment of the series starring him.
The most difficult thing I ever had to do, oddly enough, was in one of the, I can’t remember which one, in one of the Harry Potters, I had to lie by that lake. There was like a frozen lake, and I’m sort of dead and my soul is leaving my body and then it appears [this is the scene where the dementors caught up with Harry and Sirius at the lake – editor's note].
While on the surface this may seem simple, it wasn’t so at all. The actor explained that shooting a single scene can sometimes take up to several days, and that was the case here, making him subject to an endurance test on set.
It was just me laying down, but it took forever. It was slow. You'd be on a scene for a week, when normally you can shoot this in two days. I had to just lie there for a week, day in and day out, doing nothing. Then you'd have to go, “I think my kidneys are getting a bit cold,” and they put the hot water bottle on you, and you'd lie there. And then day three, you go, “My neck is killing me in this position,” and they'd put a little pillow underneath. The hardest thing I had to do was lie next to a frozen lake.
Lying next to the artificial frozen lake that was created in the studio for the film was, as you can see, Gary Oldman's biggest challenge in his career. And this was mainly related to how uncomfortable it was to remain lying down for so many days.
