Gary Oldman Reveals Shooting One HARRY POTTER Scene Was the Hardest Thing He's Ever Had to Do

During a recent interview on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, Gary Oldman talked about his time playing Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies. One of the things he shared in the interview with the hardest scene that he had to shoot in the movie, and it’s one that you probably wouldn’t expect. Not only is it the hardest scene he had to shoot for this movie, it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. It is the scene where Harry Potter casts his patronus at the frozen lake to save Black.

Oldman didn’t really have anything to do but lay there, but that wasn’t easy for him! He explained why shooting the simple scene was so hard for him, saying:

“Actually, [laughs] this is the most difficult thing I ever had to do, oddly enough, was in one of the, I can’t remember in which one, in one of the Harry Potter [movies] 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.”

Oldman went on to explain that this was a long film shoot, and lying on a frozen lake can be pretty uncomfortable. He said:

“It was just me, lying down. But, Harry Potter, it took forever. It was slow, and we’d be on a scene for weeks. You know what I mean? Normally, we can shoot this in two days. Anyway, I was lying. What they did was they built that lake inside the studio and they cooled it down and they froze this lake. And I had to just lie there for a week, day in, day out doing nothing.

“[I was] doing nothing, but…I’d be like ‘Could someone get, I think my kidneys, they’re getting a bit cold.’ Then they put the little hot water bottle under you and you lie there like that. And then day three you go ‘My neck is killing me in this position.’ Then they’d put a little pillow underneath you.”

It’s understandable why the scene was so hard for him to shoot. That doesn’t sound like fun. You’d think that they would have gotten a double to lay in his place for some of this time, but I guess not. He had to earn his money with a little bit of torture.