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  Oldman as George Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Courtesy of eOne)

It's not so unusual that an actor steps into a role first made famous by someone else, especially when it comes to literary adaptations that date back some 30 years. But filling the shoes of Obi-Wan Kenobe, aka Alec Guinness, is an altogether different beast.

If anyone's up for the challenge, though, it's venerable British actor Gary Oldman, who has given audiences everyone from a fatalistic punk rock icon (Sid & Nancy) to a Geisha-style vampire (Dracula) to a notorious assassin (JFK) and has so seamlessly disappeared into these roles that you'd be forgiven if you're not entirely sure what he actually looks like.

Dialing way back to play George Smiley, the taciturn spy at the heart of espionage thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Oldman is again almost unrecognizable in oversized spectacles and silver-streaked hair, with little scenery-chewing to be had.

But, Oldman reveals over the phone from New York, inhabiting a character with such stillness and quiet purpose was a long time coming.

"It was glorious. I've waited 30 years to do it," he quips. "I mean, there's been characters along the way I've played but you get to a certain…you mature, you get to a certain age and you can bring three decades of experience to a part like Smiley that you wouldn't have had earlier on."

Directed by Swede Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) and based on John le Carré's famous Cold War-set novel about a mole hidden amongst high-ranking M16 spies, TTSS boasts an ensemble cast of much-admired Brits – Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, John Hurt and Toby Jones – but it's Oldman's Smiley with which the audience is asked to identify. An aging spy who carries a hard life lived on his square shoulders, he's brought out of retirement to suss out the traitor and bares not a hint of the joie de vivre his namesake implies.

For his take on the part, Oldman went beyond what he calls Guinness' "huggability" and decided Smiley was a man capable of much more.

"There's a harder, cruel side to Smiley, which I think…I discussed it with John Le Carré and it's there in the books," he says. "He can turn on the heat when he wants to and that's what's made him so good at what he does and why he has garnered such loyalty and respect. And he's a master manipulator of that ugly, bureaucratic world."

That ugly world is the inner workings of The Circus, the film's apt moniker for the intelligence bureau, circa 1973 London. Though field activities take some of the men to such distant locales like Budapest, Istanbul and Turkey, Smiley stays always in London thus his look is resolutely, necessarily, British.

"The hair was a little bit of an homage to Michael Redgrave," reveals Oldman, name-checking the famous English actor. "The whole silhouette of [Smiley] actually began with a picture Tomas Alfredson had sent me, which was a black and white photograph of [author] Graham Greene from the '40s, looking very sort of spy-like and suave, with a Mackintosh [raincoat] on."

And Oldman even found a way to communicate something about his character through a detail that could easily be deemed superficial and frivolous by another actor but ultimately, if covertly, adds to the audience's understanding of Smiley.

"The glasses, they took awhile to find," he shares. "He watches everything, he's an incredible listener. It's almost physical, the way Smiley listens. So he's like an owl [with] big eyes, and he doesn't miss anything. And you know, his listening is reacting, his listening, it's doing something, it's active. It's not just hearing."

Lest you think the film is 130 minutes of Oldman actively listening and quietly spying, Alfredson gives their world an audible heartbeat and allows these men, who are strangers to each other and themselves, to be human while exposing their universal qualities.

Or as Oldman puts it, Alfredson is able to find the tender cut of meat. Let him explain.

"Tomas was very smart. You gotta find the theme and find the story you need to tell," he offers. "It's a huge animal and you can't eat the whole thing so you have to kind of find the fillet, you know what I mean? You've got to find that piece and cook that. And what he chose was the emotional journey of these people...and I think that's why one can connect with it, because it's about betrayal and it's about loyalty and it's about love lost and it's also about this man, who is, yes, on this mission to find this mole, but he also knows about terrible betrayal in his personal life."

tinker tailor soldier spy, colin firth
  (L-R) Colin Firth, David Dencik, Toby Jones, John Hurt in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Courtesy of eOne)

While the novel and seven-hour-long miniseries are familiar to most Brits, BBC viewers and Le Carré fans of a certain age, Alfredson's shadowy, melancholic version is not a remake and strives to say something new despite its well-known origins. In fact, Oldman says the author himself was clear from the start about his desire for what the film should be.

"This is an original piece and it captures, very much, the spirit of the book but it's got a uniqueness to it and it's very much what John Le Carre wanted," shares Oldman. "He met with Tomas and said to him, 'Look, please don't make the book. The book exists,' and he said, 'If you make a bad film, you will have a bad film and my book will always be good.' [Laughs]. And he said, 'Don't make the television series. If you're gonna do this, then put your own signature on it.' So I think it does two things: I think it's a damn good movie on its own and, for fans of Le Carré, I hope they won't be too disappointed."

Understated to the end. George Smiley would be proud.

--

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy opens in select theatres December 16.



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