Gary Oldman’s first wife Lesley Manville has congratulated her ex on his Oscar-win as she missed out on taking home a statue herself.
Oscar nominee Ms Manville has said she was not ‘sour-faced’ following her frustrating night in Tinsletown.
The British actress was nominated in the the best supporting actress category for her performance in Phantom Thread.
Left, Gary Oldman after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor and right, his ex wife and son Lesley Manville
Oldman meanwhile wowed the Academy with his turn as Winston Churchill in the Darkest Hour, in the Best Actor category
Oldman meanwhile wowed the Academy with his turn as Winston Churchill in the Darkest Hour, in the Best Actor category.
The pair were briefly married together and share a 29-year-old son, Alfie.
Manville, who was accompanied by her son to the awards, said their night at the Oscars felt like a ‘family evening’, adding that ‘everyone gets on’.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Of course, everyone wants the story that I’m sour-faced about it. But I’m not remotely sour-faced.
‘Listen, we have a child together, we’re a very successful family who have … he’s got a new wife, and we all get on. Everyone gets on.
‘So it’s all fine. So we’ve had a delightful night. His sons from his other partner and my son are all very close, so it’s a family evening. And that’s what it’s felt like.
Left, Oldman and Manville after announcing their engagement in 1986, and right, the pair together with their son Alfie in the 1989 film, The Firm
‘It’s felt like a family evening. And Gary and I are friends, so it’s been very good and been very nice for our son, I think.
‘Not that my son lives vicariously through his parents, I don’t want him to do that, but it has been nice for him that he’s had his father and his mother nominated.
‘And he can see us all having a great evening together.
‘It’s a strange evening, the Oscars are a strange evening, and I’ve never experienced them before, so tonight was my first time, but it’s an unusual evening.’
Oldman and Manville met in 1984 in a play at London’s Royal Court.
He was the son of an alcoholic welder from south-east London while she had spent two years in ITV soap Emmerdale, and was a taxi driver’s daughter from Hove, East Sussex.
During the early years of her career Lesley Manville spent two years in the soap, Emmerdale
The couple married in 1987 and were soon seen as the ‘first couple’ of a new wave of British theatre.
But Oldman was also making a name for himself on screen, first with his visceral performance as drug-addicted Sex Pistol Sid Vicious in Sid And Nancy in 1985, and then as gay playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears the following year.
In an interview at the time, Oldman confessed that role in particular had strained their relationship.
‘I went off sex and Lesley and I didn’t make love,’ he said, adding that he had ‘became very camp’ for the role.
The relationship deteriorated even further as Oldman was wooed by Hollywood while his wife’s great successes revolved around British theatre.
There was also the issue of Oldman’s wild drinking, something he did not conquer until 1997 after a stint in rehab.
Manville was nominated in the the best supporting actress category for her performance in Phantom Thread
When Alfie was three months old, Oldman left their home. He conceded after their divorce that his tendency to become ‘emotionally overloaded’ from his roles made him impossible to live with.
‘As an actor you can cry in front of 500 people, or scream, or rape someone, and it releases things in you,’ he said.
‘But it makes me anxious and neurotic and hell to live with. I’ve done a lot of work on myself.’
Another factor was Oldman’s romance with Uma Thurman, then 20, who had made her name in the sexually explicit film Henry And June in 1990.
Oldman and Thurman moved in together in New York and married as soon as his divorce from Ms Manville came through.
That marriage, too, was short-lived. He went on to marry model Donya Fiorentino, with whom he had two sons, Charlie and Gulliver. He was later married to singer Alexandra Edenborough, and now art curator Gisele Schmidt.
When his son Alfie was three months old, Oldman (left) left the home he shared with Manville (right, with her son Alfie) and the couple divorced
There is no question Ms Manville felt abandoned by Oldman and has described the loneliness she felt, breastfeeding her son backstage during performances, in the months following their divorce.
Although she pursued new relationships, she raised Alfie very much as a single parent in Brentford, west London – while Oldman wowed Hollywood in hits such as JFK and Dracula and pursued liaisons with female stars.
In a 1994 interview she said: ‘He plays a small part [in Alfie’s life], with the accent on the small.’
She is rightly proud of what she has coped with and achieved – rave reviews and award nominations – in her career.
‘I brought up a child virtually on my own, I ran a house and I kept my career going, which is no mean feat,’ she has said.
In 2000 she married actor Joe Dixon, but they divorced four years later. She is, she says, now happily single: ‘The times in my life when I’ve been single have been more formative and crucial than I could have imagined.’