Who does Gary Oldman play in Parthenope?

Gary Oldman has been widely praised for her performance as Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses, a slobby drunk leading a team of cast off spies. But in his latest movie, Parthenope, he instead plays a stylish drunk, and real-life figure, that offers a key bit of insight to the titular character. So who does Gary Oldman play in Parthenope?

That would be acclaimed American author John Cheever. While Oldman's performance as Cheever is only in the movie for a little bit, it is nonetheless pivotal for the growth of Parthenope (Celeste Della Porta). As Parthenope, her brother Raimondo (Daniele Rienzo) and their friend Sandrino (Dario Atia) spend some time in Capri over the summer, she just happens to meet Cheever, whose work she admires, at the hotel pool. Cheever is quite drunk when she first meets him, but he observes that people are stunned by Parthenope's beauty, which gives her a special kind of power, something that Parthenope then begins to use to her advantage. They have one more encounter along a path at night when Parthenope asks if she can walk with Cheever, but he says no, not wanting to steal a second of her youth.

But who was John Cheever in real life? Continue on below for some more details about the famous author.

Who was John Cheever?

Cheever was a short-story writer and novelist, whose notable works include "Falconer", "The Enormous Radio", "The Swimmer" and "The Wapshot Chronicle", the latter of which won him the National Book Award in 1957. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for "The Stories of John Cheever" in 1978. According to Britanica, Cheever’s work was described as chronicling the life, manners and morals of suburban, middle-class America.

In Parthenope, Cheever is depicted as a drunk and mentions that he has a fondness for men. Cheever was a known alcoholic for much of his life, but at the time he meets Parthenope (the early 1970s) in the movie, Cheever had not come out publicly, so he is sharing an intimate detail with this young woman. In fact, as Cheever was married and had multiple children, Cheever’s sexual orientation was not revealed until after his death in 1982. As described in a feature from The Guardian, Cheever’s daughter Susan first shared those details in a memoir, Home Before Dark, though she describes Cheever as bisexual. Cheever’s son Benjamin would then edit and publish letters from the author that further revealed Cheever’s homosexuality.

Parthenope is not the first time that Cheever has been included as part of a TV show or movie. Perhaps most famously, the TV show Seinfeld had an episode, aptly titled “The Cheever Letters,” where a stash of letters from Cheever is found to be in the possession of George’s (Jason Alexander) girlfriend Susan’s (Heidi Swedberg) father (Warren Frost), revealing that her father had at least an emotional relationship with Cheever.

Parthenope is now playing in select US movie theaters, expanding to additional markets in the coming weeks; it premieres in the UK on May 2. Read WTW’s Parthenope review for our thoughts on the movie as a whole.