It's easy to forget the accent. The lax consonants, curled vowels and earthbound, honest - to - god sonorousness of a South London delivery. Despite years away from his birthplace and a procession of perfectly intoned Americans, Hungarians, Russian émigrés and drug - fuddled Rastas, New Cross' finest son Gary Oldman still talks the talk. It's the reassuring, almost calming sound of a man still in touch with his soul.

Sitting in the lone strip of sunlight spilling in through the hotel window from the warm Cannes' after, Oldman, serious to the point of earnestness (smiles are at a premium, laughs sold out), is carefully expounding on how he received that most inevitable of thespian promotions. Actor to director.

"I didn't have a particularly strong desire to throw a camera around," he says pacing his words for maximum clarity. "I know that some actors talk about that 'natural progression', but the story wanted to be told. It was bubbling around in my head."

Part exorcism, part eulogy, part lamentation, Nil By Mouth is Oldman's very personal tribute to the grey, bitter streets of his New Cross - Bermondsey - Lewisham upbringing on the fringes of South East London's old Docklands. Unstinting in its honesty, the film focuses on a dissolute family, fragged and ruptured in a cycle of drug abuse, familial violence and sloppy crime. Tuned to a neverending stream of verbal acid that would make even the Uzi - toting denizens of South Central LA blanch, it is an intense, powerful exercise in British schooled shit - real cinema. Less kitchen sink, more U - bend filmmaking. Ken Loach would be proud.

"I knew I could give it an integrity and honesty because I could put my foot down and go, 'I'm shooting it like this, you know, I'm not watering down the accents, I'm not making the language more palatable'. Fuck America, fuck the rest of the world. I've made this for Britain and I want a bare knuckle film. I wouldn't trust it with someone else 'cause they'd have to sentimentalise it, soften it all up."

The 39 - year - old Oldman, beginning to show his age in his thinning face and waistline, is as passionate about this film as anything in his professional life. As well as the $1.4 million of his own - hard - earned cash he injected into the project, there is a significant degree of his own good self in the mix; experiences, memories and feelings from the "old life" written between the savage lines. The characters themselves (Ray Winstone's brutal paterfamilias, Kathy Burke's downtrodden but devoted wife, Charlie Creed - Miles' dumbfounded smackhead brother et al) are pieced together from the genuine articles.

"There is a lot of me in the character also," he states, eager to involve his own personality. "Even the little girl (Leah Fitzgerald who plays Winstone's daughter, the mute onlooker to the ordeals) is sort of me. I was quite shy, quite quiet as a kid."

It becomes increasingly obvious through the interview that Oldman sees this film as a form of confessional. The subsequent publicity haul a continuation of the process. Later in the festival Oldman was to break down publicly, telling through real tears of his drunkard father, who left when he was seven. He died in 1986 without reconciliation and the film's captioned tribute "For my father. . ." rings with tangible irony. Ouch. The film's subsequent message of cyclical ruination is doubly significant when Oldman starts on his recent climb to the wagon from a distillery sized juice abuse.

"I broke the cycle," he says casually, having begun his answer describing the ritualistic drug abuse depicted in the film before slipping into Oldman - tells - all mode. "Really, by the end of, the booze had me on my knees. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. It whipped my ass. I functioned, it wasn't like I couldn't remember lines and was turning up late, but I got physically. . .I was never violent, the only person I was ever violent to was myself. There was something at the back of my mind - God, I've become like my dad. I've become this bloke and I can do something about it. And I did."

You can see where Gary Oldman and Nil By Mouth are coming from. Life's a bitch. . .and it goes on and on. Father to son. But does he not see the new government proffering olive branches? There is a shrug, a sigh:

"I'm not saying that it's necessarily a bad thing that they don't recognise it. . .You know, whether this new government will make a difference. In a way, whatever they promise my characters, those people, they don't vote."

And as governments fail, filmmakers step in.

"I don't want to this to just play to an arthouse bourgeois audience. I want people to see it and think, God that is me. That is my relationship. Hopefully, maybe some people could recognise that and at least that have a think about it. Provoke a bit of thought. I mean, I hope it does well at the Elephant. I hope it has a good run in Lewisham."

Does Oldman not worry about being uncommercial? The like of Loach and Mike Leigh have struggled to find a wide audience, becoming ghettoised in some no - fun social chapter of Brit cinema.

"I have a big chunk of my own money in it," he replies, skirting annoyance. "I'm willing to take a loss because I did what I wanted to do, I made what I wanted it to be. I talk to people, it's like cinema began with Reservoir Dogs, Things To Do When You're Dead In Denver (sic), I think, fuckin' hell, say something. Influences and inspiration for a movie like Nil By Mouth are there, you go back to Passolini, Ken Loach, Mike Leigh, Cassevetes. There are things in Secrets and Lies that touched me and I found myself sitting in the Lumiere cinema crying. You come out and you care about the people as opposed to cinema where you've seen a body count of about a thousand who you don't give a fuck about. I want to be moved and involved. I'm not particularly interested in entertainment."

Oldman is quite aware of his hypocrisy. He's been a mainstay of Hollywood bad guy - ism for the last decade. Having arisen, with the help of an inspired drama teacher, from the inner - city poverty trap of his faction, he shaped a niche for himself as an archetypal British maverick (misunderstood mavericks a speciality) - Sid and Nancy, Prick Up Your Ears, Track 29 and The Firm. Talent was self - evident, in particular a knack for swallowing up his gravelly New Cross grind to deliver pitch - perfect drawling Deep Southerners or the maniacal rasp of undead Eastern Europeans (he hired a singing coach to lower his voice an octave for Bram Stoker's Dracula). It was coupled with a reputed ability to switch characters on and off in a matter of seconds. The studios dug his thang, knocked on the door and saw villainy in his unchisled mien. Criminal Law, State Of Grace, JFK, Dracula and True Romance paid the rent thankyouverymuch, but left the taint of stereotyping. New Cross was long gone and a string of visible relationships: Lesley Manville, Uma Thurman, Isabella Rossellini and his new wife Donya Fiorentino (they met in rehab) coupled with the booze battle led to an unwitting bad boy scenario being talked up by the tabloids.

"There's a perception of me," he concurs, "this thing the tabloids have got hold of. This wild man. There was one paparazzi picture of me coming out of a nightclub, not one of me punching someone while I was drunk. I got nicked for drunken driving, but I've never done drugs and yet the reputation. . ."

Perhaps the nature of his roles has become indivisible from the human being?

"Yeah, they love the tag of yob thug. I've been outspoken. The school of Tim Roth - you've got an accent, you must be a lad."

Still, how does he rationalise the big wage, big screen thuggery with the social conscience he touts so loudly?

"You just switch yourself off and think, they pay the rent."

Oldman smiles for the first time - his last three roles have been the antithesis of Nil By Mouth: the absurdist of The Fifth Element, the fruitcake Russian hi - jacker in Air Force One and mad scientist Zachary Smith in the forthcoming Lost In Space ("I play a strange sadistic weirdo that my kid can go and see!")

"If you like, my celebrity has helped me take time off to do a Nil By Mouth and if I use it well I will be able to do another. So, that will, in a way, feed my real passion as - I use it loosely - an artist. That's how I want to express myself. . ."

Oldman pauses, and stands to peer out of the window down onto a Cannes publicity hoarding. A giant Brosnan fizzog advertises the forthcoming Bond movie. He grins, again. That could have been a wink.

"I've not been the villain in a James Bond movie. . .yet." He effortlessly slips into the camp Eastern twangs of villainy. "Your weapons are useless, Mr Bond." He stops and turns. "You know, I'll keep chugging along."

To another Nil By Mouth?

"Yeah. It's a neighbourhood I'd like to revisit. There are issues there that I will go back to. Because it fascinates me."

No, he'll return because it is a part of him.

Dracula star Gary Oldman yesterday revealed how he grew up in fear of his violent father who would terrorise the family in drunken rages. The tearful actor said that once his father hit his mother with a steel - capped boot and then tried to drown her.

Oldman, 39, went on to refer to his own drinking problems which occurred when he became famous.

"It is very much the sins of the sins of the father are visited on the son. We are a lot sicker than we think we are. What I've tried to do is break the cycle," Oldman said at the Cannes Film Festival.

He said his own drinking became so serious that he decided to make himself "clean."

The actor who starred as punk rocker Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy and played a corrupt detective in Leon, decipts his brutal upbringing in South East London in his first film as director, Nil By Mouth. Oldman, who also wrote the script said:

"This movie is a huge part of my life. "My family have seen the film and they are very moved by its honesty and that's what I set out to do - make something from the heart. "I hope I haven't disgraced them, but shown them with dignity." Visibly upset, Oldman said: "My father used to sit in his chair, drinking as early as 9:30 in the morning and then the abuse would start. "The sun never shined in my home. It was either grey or raining. It felt claustrophobic and you knew that you only wanted to get out of there. Some of my memories were so horrendous, I couldn't put them in the movie because no one would believe it. It became the hardest thing I've ever had to do." He added: "My dad left when I was a small boy and we didn't have two pennies to rub together, but my mum went out and got two jobs. "My mum and my two sisters are heroic women but you never heard my mother or sisters complaining."

His father is played by Ray Winston and the film is produced by French director Luc Besson.

Oldman, who now has homes in New York and Los Angeles, returned to his South London roots to shoot Nil By Mouth. The film has already been highly rated at Cannes where it is competing for an award.