Actor Gary Oldman Speaks About Playing The Late John le Carré’s Iconic Character George Smiley in “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”

On Halloween 2020, Scottish actor Sean Connery died at 90 years old. His breakthrough role as British secret agent James Bond established the character and the idea of what was a British spy. Between 1962 and 1967, Connery played 007 in Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice, After departing from Bond, Connery returned in 1971 for Diamonds Are Forever, the seventh film; he then made his final appearance in Never Say Never Again, a 1983 remake of Thunderball. Connery’s portrayal of James Bond was selected as the third-greatest hero in cinema history by the American Film Institute.

On Saturday, December 12th, 2020, master author John le Carré died at 89 years old. Through a series of award-winning, best-selling novels, he created a legendary spy character, the unassuming but devious George Smiley — the anti Bond. Smiley was serious, dour, grumpy, not particularly attractive and certainly not sexy/charming in the way that Connery’s Bond (or for that matter, Pierce Brosnan’s) was. Introduced in his hit novel, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, le Carré — or rather David Cornwell, his birth name (he adopted his pseudonym because he was in Britain’s  spy agency at the time) — through smartly complex prose, expressed the intricate and elusive mind of a master agent.

Q: What insights did you garner about George from le Carré?

GO: Everything you really need to know about him is in the book. But le Carré was there as a resource if we needed him. I wanted to know a little bit more about George in the field, before you meet him in the film, and get more of a sense of what it was like actually being a spy working in the field.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like. But John talked about the level of paranoia, of being on an assignment and waiting for the footsteps on the stairs, that your cover was blown, and that the game was up. That was from his own experience. He said the level of paranoia could be so high, that even George might think he was the mole. Those are the things I wanted to get from john. He’s fantastic. He’s 80 years old, but it’s like hanging out with a 25 year old. He’s got the energy and a mind like a steel trap.

Q: What was the key to playing George?

GO: You look for a feeling or a sensation. There’s a passage in the book where Ann describes him as a swift, as someone who can regulate his body temperature to that of the room of the situation he’s in. it’s almost like you can lower your heartbeat. That was the key in for me. He’s that character who is described as a perfect spy because he blends in with the room or even the furniture that he’s sitting in. he sort of disappears, and that’s where the stillness comes from. That’s how I read it.

Q: What transformation did you go through for the part?

GO: They grayed my hair, and the glasses, of course. They’re iconic. The glasses, to me, are equivalent to the Aston Martin (James Bond’s signature car). And I had the scene where I swim in the pond, and I knew that I was going to be in some sort of period bathing trunks. And I wanted a little bit of that middle-aged, retired – pats his stomach – thing. So I had an excuse. I called it eating for George.

Q: What’s it like being a chameleon?

GO: A chameleon? Part of the fun of the job is the playing of different people. That’s the joy of it. Alec Guinness, of course, made this part iconic. He was the face of Smiley for many generations. There’s part of me that likes all of that changing your shape and your voice.

Q: Do you see yourself as a spy? Do you think you’d make a good spy?

GO: I would make a terrible spy.

Q: Why is that?

GO: Certainly I know they play roles and they role play and take on other identities, but acting is sort of the opposite of it. You’re trying to always get to the truth of something. You’re not lying. You’re trying to be kind of honest. Dishonesty and infidelity and all of that, I can’t stand it. It’s not a part of my make up.

Q: A part of this film is an effort to get to the truth. Is that why you connected with the film?

GO: I like the fact that he is sure in his beliefs and he’s very loyal and has gained a great deal of respect. The fact that he can work outside of the circus, and yet he can recruit the services of people like Guillaume and Mendel, those relationships are there and he’s worked on them and established them.

So, he gets a great deal of respect from people because of how really honest and loyal he is. But he can be cruel. He can be mean, George can. There’s a bit of a sadist in him. He knows that it’s a bit of an ugly world that he lives in. I mean, he accepts it. I don’t think that he likes it, but there are things about the job that are distasteful.

Q: This is one of your more internalized roles. This character doesn’t verbalize everything he thinks. He holds a lot back. You are associated with very demonstrative characters. How did you approach holding back with this character?

GO: Inasmuch the same way that you let go. It was sort of pretty much all there for me, all the clues to playing him were really in the material, certainly in the source material. Everything you really need to know about George is there in the book. There’s a passage in the book, the key to it for me, that unlocked the door to it, Anne talks about Smiley. She says that he’s like a swift and that he can almost regulate his body temperature to that of the room and the situation that he’s in, like a reptile. That’s where that sort of stillness came from.

Q: A lot of the early write ups of the film have said things like an almost barely recognizable Gary Oldman. Does an actor aspire to lose any vestige of themselves in a role?

GO: I come from a tradition… There are obviously great actors and there are lists of people if you ask an actor. They say, “Who are your favorite actresses and actors?” They rattle off a list of people. I remember growing up in the ’60’s and the ’70’s in the UK and ironically [Alec] Guinness, who was nearly 70 years old, became the face of George Smiley.  think the fun of it is trying to sort of at least give the appearance of becoming another person. I do very little as George physically. I grayed my hair.

Q: You were very particular about the glasses. Have you ever had an experience like that before with another prop where it meant so much to the character?

GO: I can’t think of one. The glasses, he talks about them in the book, and the glasses to me, are Smiley and his spectacles are iconic. They’re the Aston Martin to Smiley. They’re as important and so I drove Tomas mad. I drove him completely crazy. I looked at over three hundred pairs of glasses. I found them in Pasadena. When in doubt just go to the Pasadena.

Q: At the flea market?

GO: No. A place called Old Focals, a guy called Russ who has 30,000 pairs of vintage spectacles. It’s an amazing store.

Q: And it’s where Colin Firth got his glasses for A Single Man?

GO: Yes, and that’s where I first heard about them. It’s funny how you make connections. I’m driving up Sunset Boulevard and I see this poster for A Single Man, and first of all, I think it’s Marcello Mastroianni. Then I get closer and it’s Colin Firth and in that poster he looks so sort of into the period. I thought, “I like those glasses he’s wearing,” because I wear glasses. It’s a thing. It’s like clothes. They’re like an accessory. I thought, “I like those glasses he’s wearing,” and then I read in a magazine when I was in an airport, I saw this little article about this big in the magazine and it was advertising those sort of vintage, retro glasses and it said, “Like Colin Firth’s,” and it said where he got them. I made a note of it. I thought, “I’ll have to Old Focals one day and get me a pair of them glasses.”

A year later or whatever we were doing Smiley and I was trying on a few pairs. I found one pair in England and I was looking for them and I couldn’t find them. I thought, ‘You know that place in Pasadena?’ I went and I said, ‘They have to be period ’70s glasses and they can’t be earlier than ’69 and they can’t really be later than ’74. So, that’s the window that I’m looking at to get these glasses,’ and he had them.

Q: You talked about the sadistic side to Smiley. You seem to play characters that reveal another side, do you think?

GO: This is a little, obviously, subtler, but it’s there in the book. Guinness’ portrayal which I think is amazing and definitive, but he’s a more huggable Smiley than me. When Prideaux says to him, “Did my people get out?” Smiley doesn’t have to say, “No, they were blown and in fact the story is that you blew them.'” That’s to get a reaction. That’s what I call the tickle.

Smiley would give you just a little tickle. He says to Esterhase, he sets up that whole thing where Esterhase does not want to go back to Hungary. He doesn’t want to go back there and so he sets up this whole airplane and the thing and then he says to him, “Are you still a wanted man?”

He just throws it away, but it’s dark. There’s a sort of meanness to that, and then other side of it I think there must be a sort of masochistic side to him because he lets Anne go off with all these men. It’s not the first time she’s had an affair. When we meet her she’s all ready had the affair with Haydon and is now off with someone else. In the book she’s run off with an actor.

Q: How dare she…

GO: In the book she ran off with an actor. Those actors, I’ll tell you. You never get the feeling that he challenges her or argues. He accepts her back. He doesn’t go after the lover. So, there must be that.

Q: That’s almost a sadistic thing in itself.

GO: People that do that, there’s a part of them where they get very comfortable being the victim. So, there’s both those qualities to him.

Q: Were you able to draw on the other incarnations of Smiley, not just Guinness?

GO: Yeah, but I purposely didn’t revisit the series because I thought that I would get contaminated by it. James Mason played him. Tony Hopkins played him.

Q: How satisfying is it for you at an advanced age to being playing such badasses?

GO: Seasoned. We’re in a chain, we’re links in a chain. There’s actors that are there that have been there before me and part of a generation of people that are passing through. Then behind me now is people like Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Fassbender and they’re great and we’re all… I feel that I’m probably getting a little too seasoned or mature to bounce around the walls.

I was happy to be on Batman and I would watch Tom Hardy and I just thought, ‘Rather you than me.’ I’ve sort of been there and done that. It’s a bit like someone should tell Mick [Jagger], ‘Just stop it now,’ do you know what I mean.,

Q: What do you mean?

GO: They’re doing another tour. Come on. There comes a point when you want to rein it in a little and I’ve jokingly said that this is a sitting down part for me. It’s interesting where normally if you motor a scene, you drive a scene playing those characters that really physically express themselves and emotionally, it’s interesting here where you’re driving it and you are the lead, but you’re doing it from such a reigned in, passive place. He’s a very interesting leading character in that sense.

Q: Could you identify with this character, the things that you talked about, that he can regulate his temperature to that of the room and situation he’s in?

GO: No. I could understand it. I’m very subtle, as you can see. I’m not very flamboyant myself.

Q: It took 18 months for them to find someone for the George Smiley role. Why do you think that it took so long to cast it and what qualities do you have that actually fit for this?

GO: I think it was six months, but it was a long time and then the casting director said, “What about Gary?” Then the light bulb went on and he went, “Yeah, he could do it.” But going back to the question of these big characters and things, I mean you are somewhat at the mercy of the imagination of the people that are casting you. You do tend to get typecast a bit.

Q: Any other iconic characters on your list? James Bond?

Q: Any special Christmas plans?

GO: At home with the kids.