Gary Oldman found his teenage years “traumatic” because he couldn't get a girlfriend and struggled with puberty.
Gary Oldman doesn't have one good memory from his teen years
The 65-year-old actor – who has Alfie, 34, with first wife Lesley Manville, Gulliver, 25, and Charlie, 23, with third wife Donya Diorentino – has no “fond memories” of his adolescence and recalled looking at his own sons at the same stage in their lives and being grateful he didn’t have to live through it again.
He told Candis magazine: “You couldn’t pay me enough to go back to my teens. It was very traumatic.
“I don’t have fond memories of any of it.
“I didn’t like school, your genes are rearranging themselves, your skin’s all oily and you’re getting acne, you’re trying to date girls and you’re getting rejected and oh, my God, I couldn’t bear to go through all that again.
“When my sons were in their teens, I used to look at them and think, ‘My God, I wouldn’t want to go back there!”
But one good thing that did happen to Gary as a teenager was watching ‘The Raging Moon’ on TV and having a “spiritual experience”.
He recalled: “It was like a lightning bolt. I was just watching this movie on TV when I was 15 years old and I just suddenly decided there and then, ‘I’m going to be an actor.’
“Having never been in a play at school, having never even read a play, having never been interested in drama or anything like that… I saw this film, connected with it and thought, ‘That’s what I want to do for a living!’
“It was like a spiritual experience.
“I went to drama school when I was 17 – and that’s when my life started.”
Gary has enjoyed being a parent and teaching his children basic life lessons in “simple” ways.
He said: “It’s about learning to compromise and realising life isn’t all about you.
“It’s about teaching them the fairly simple stuff at a young age – don’t bang your knife and fork, say please, say thank you, and learn to wait your turn in life.
“That’s very important. If you learn to wait your turn in Snakes and Ladders, you’ll know when you’re older that you don’t just walk into a restaurant or a bank and go, ‘I’m here!’ You have to wait.
You can learn life lessons through a simple game of Snakes and Ladders.”
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