Politics & Power Quote by Gary Oldman

Oldman’s joke lands because it treats identity like a virus you pick up from the air: stay in America long enough and you get “contaminated.” It’s classic actor’s banter, but it carries a real tension familiar to any long-term expat - not the grand, flag-waving kind, but the slow drift of habits, cadences, and assumptions. An accent becomes a costume you never fully take off; citizenship becomes less decisive than the daily lived language of a place.

“I’m still a member of the Empire!” is deliberately archaic, a wink at Britain’s lingering nostalgia and its slightly absurd imperial self-mythology. He’s poking at the idea of national purity while also admitting he feels the pull of belonging somewhere else. The punchline isn’t that America changes you; it’s that the change is subtle enough to feel like betrayal. “American with a British accent” captures a liminal status: he can pass as British on sound alone while thinking, working, and reacting in a more American register.

Context matters. Oldman built much of his career inside U.S. film culture, often playing Americans and global “types,” while remaining an emblem of British acting prowess. The line gently deflates the prestige of “Britishness” as a brand, reminding us that cultural identity is porous, transactional, and shaped by the industries we work in. It’s self-deprecation with an edge: the Empire may be gone, but the marketing of it still clings - until Los Angeles rewrites you.