Gary Leonard Oldman was born in New Cross, London, on 21 March 1958, the son of Leonard Bertram Oldman (1921–1985), a former sailor who also worked as a welder, and Kathleen (née Cheriton; 1919–2018). He said his father was an alcoholic who left the family when Oldman was seven years old. His older sister, Maureen, is an actress better known as Laila Morse; she performed in Oldman's directorial debut Nil by Mouth (1997), before taking on her most famous role of Mo Harris in the BBC soap opera EastEnders.
Oldman attended West Greenwich School in Deptford, leaving at the age of 16 to work in a sports shop. He played piano as a child, but he gave up his musical aspirations to pursue an acting career after seeing Malcolm McDowell's performance in the film The Raging Moon (1971). In a 1995 interview with Charlie Rose he said, "Something about Malcolm just arrested me, and I connected, and I said, 'I wanna do that.'"
Growing up in south London, Oldman supported his local football club, Millwall, but also followed Manchester United because he idolised George Best. In 2011 he learned from his mother that his father had played for Millwall just after the Second World War: "Just after the war, [my mother] ran a boarding house for football playersMillwall players. And I knew that my dad was involved somehow with the reserve team. But two weeks ago my mum said, 'Oh yeah, your dad played for Millwall. When he was young he had a couple of first team games.'"
Oldman studied with the Young People's Theatre in Greenwich during the mid-1970s, while working jobs on assembly lines, as a porter in an operating theatre, selling shoes and beheading pigs in an abattoir. He applied unsuccessfully to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), which welcomed him to try again the following year, but advised him to find something else to do for a living. When asked by Rose whether he had reminded the RADA of this, Oldman joked that "the work speaks for itself".
Oldman won a scholarship to attend Rose Bruford College in Sidcup, south-east London, from which he graduated with a BA in Acting in 1979. He described himself as a "shy" but diligent worker during his time there, performing roles such as Puck in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
