Actor Gary Oldman is sick of what he perceives as a double standard in Hollywood and got his feelings off his chest in an upcoming interview with Playboy.
“Well, if I called Nancy Pelosi a c*** — and I’ll go one better, a f****** useless c*** — I can’t really say that. But Bill Maher and Jon Stewart can, and nobody’s going to stop them from working because of it. Bill Maher could call someone a fag and get away with it. He said to Seth MacFarlane this year, ‘I thought you were going to do the Oscars again. Instead they got a lesbian.’ He can say something like that. Is that more or less offensive than Alec Baldwin saying to someone in the street, ‘You fag’? I don’t get it.”
Oldman also asserted that the culture in Hollywood during the past awards season was such that “if you didn’t vote for ’12 Years a Slave,’ you were a racist. You have to be very careful about what you say.”
He also expressed sympathy toward Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin, no strangers to controversy themselves.
“Mel Gibson is in a town that’s run by Jews, and he said the wrong thing because he’s actually bitten the hand that I guess has fed him – and doesn’t need to feed him anymore because he’s got enough dough,” Oldman said. “He’s like an outcast, a leper, you know?”
“I don’t know about Mel. He got drunk and said a few things, but we’ve all said those things,” the actor told Playboy during the interview, which began with a discussion of Oldman’s role in “Dawn of Planet of the Apes.”
“We’re all f****** hypocrites,” he added. “That’s what I think about it. The policeman who arrested him has never used the word n***** or that f****** Jew?”
“I’m being brutally honest here,” Oldman said. “It’s the hypocrisy of it that drives me crazy.”
The Academy Award-nominated actor describes himself as a Libertarian. At one point during the interview, he expresses concern that his bold comments would make him sound like a bigot.
He made it clear his problem isn’t with the groups he referenced in general, but dishonesty itself.
“I do have particular views and opinions that most of this town doesn’t share, but it’s not like I’m a fascist or a racist. “There’s nothing like that in my history.”
Does he have a point? Is making that point worth the hit his career will surely take? Considering Oldman’s history, he’s probably not too concerned about how his comments will impact his box-office return.
If anything, these candid comments have gotten people talking about Gary Oldman, which certainly isn’t an everyday thing.
[H/T: Variety]