Gary Oldman

Gary Leonard Oldman, born March 21, 1958, in New Cross, South London, and raised in a working-class household in Deptford following his parents' early separation, is one of the most chameleonic and technically accomplished actors in the history of cinema, a performer of such extraordinary transformation capability and commitment to physical and psychological reinvention that he has occupied a unique position in both avant-garde and mainstream Hollywood cinema for four decades, playing mass murderers and beloved literary heroes, real historical figures and comic book villains, with an equal and apparently effortless command that has made him the paradigm case of the transformative screen actor. Growing up in poverty in South London after his father Leonard, a former Royal Navy electrician and occasional singer, abandoned the family when Gary was seven, he studied at the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in London and then at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, building his theatrical credentials through years of rigorous stage work including the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, where he developed the discipline and range that would define his approach. His early film work in Sid and Nancy (1986), in which he played the Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious with terrifying commitment to physical degradation, and Prick Up Your Ears (1987), in which he played the playwright Joe Orton, established him immediately as a transformative actor of unusual courage. He reinvented himself repeatedly across Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), JFK (1991) as Lee Harvey Oswald, Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), True Romance (1993), Léon: The Professional (1994) as the terrifying DEA agent Stansfield, The Fifth Element (1997), Air Force One (1997), Immortal Beloved (1994) as Beethoven, Lost in Space (1998), Jesus Henry Christ (2012), Harry Potter series (2004-2011) as Sirius Black, the Batman trilogy (2005-2012) as Commissioner Gordon, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), Criminal (2016), Darkest Hour (2017, Academy Award for Best Actor as Winston Churchill in a performance requiring two hours of prosthetics and makeup daily and winning universal critical acclaim), and Mank (2020).