page_title: Gary Oldman
section_title: Mainstream success (1991–2001)
hierarchical_section_title: Gary Oldman / Acting career / Mainstream success (1991–2001)
caption_attribution_description: IMG_5478
context_page_description: Gary Leonard Oldman is an English actor and filmmaker. Among other accolades, he has won an Academy Award, three British Academy Film Awards, two Critics' Choice Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Known for his versatility and intense acting style, he is regarded as one of the greatest actors of his generation. His films have grossed over $11 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing actors of all time.
  Oldman began acting in theatre in 1979 and made his film debut in Remembrance. He continued to lead a stage career, during which he performed at London's Royal Court and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, with credits including Cabaret, Romeo and Juliet, Entertaining Mr Sloane, Saved, The Country Wife, and Hamlet. He rose to prominence in British film with his portrayals of Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy, Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears, and Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead while also garnering attention as the leader of a gang of football hooligans in the controversial television film The Firm.
context_section_description: In 1991, Oldman began filming Dylan Thomas, a biopic on Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, with his then-wife Uma Thurman as Caitlin Thomas, however production was shut down shortly after filming began. Later in 1991, Oldman starred in his first US blockbuster, playing Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's JFK. According to Oldman, very little was written about Oswald in the script. Stone gave him several plane tickets, a list of contacts and told him to do his own research. Oldman met with Oswald's wife, Marina, and her two daughters to prepare for the role. He filmed scenes for the 1992 neo-noir thriller Final Analysis, however they were cut from the film.
  In 1992, he starred as Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's romance-horror Bram Stoker's Dracula. A commercially successful film adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, it was a box office success worldwide. Oldman's performance was recognised as the best male performance of 1992 by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, which awarded Oldman its Best Actor award. He served as a member of the Jury at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. Oldman became a popular portrayer of villains: he played violent pimp Drexl Spivey in the Tony Scott-directed, Quentin Tarantino-written True Romance (1993), a role which MSN Movies described as "one of cinema's most memorable villains"; a sadistic prison warden in Murder in the First (1995); futuristic corporate tyrant Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element (1997); and Dr. Zachary Smith/Spider Smith in the commercially successful but critically panned Lost in Space (1998). He was considered for two roles in Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994), but neither were realised. Tarantino contemplated Oldman as gangster Jules Winnfield (played by Samuel L. Jackson), while TriStar executives recommended him for drug dealer Lance (portrayed by Eric Stoltz).
  In 1994's Léon: The Professional, he played corrupt DEA officer Norman Stansfield, which has since been named by multiple publications as one of the best villains, and most corrupt cops, in cinema. Oldman also portrayed various accents; along with the Transylvanian Count Dracula, he gave a critically acclaimed reading of German-born Viennese composer Ludwig van Beethoven in Immortal Beloved, and played Russian terrorist Egor Korshunov in the 1997 blockbuster Air Force One. In 1998, MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch aired a match between claymation representations of Oldman and Christopher Walken to determine the greatest cinematic villain. The following year, Oldman served as executive producer of Plunkett & Macleane, and portrayed another historical figure, Pontius Pilate, in television film Jesus. He was also considered for the role of Morpheus in The Matrix.
  Oldman appeared opposite Jeff Bridges as zealous Republican congressman Sheldon Runyon in The Contender (2000), of which he was also executive producer. Oldman received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for his performance, although some claimed he was dissatisfied with DreamWorks' supposed editing of the film to reflect pro-Democratic leanings. These reports were declared "sloppy sensationalism" by his manager, Douglas Urbanski, who said that Oldman was "the least political person I know". He stressed that neither he nor Oldman had made the statements attributed to them, that they had "produced this film, every last cut and frame", and that DreamWorks "did not influence the final cut or have anything to do with it." Urbanski asserted that Oldman received "creepy phone calls advising him that he was ruining his chances of an Oscar nomination". The notion of Oldman criticising DreamWorks was dispelled as a "myth" by critic Roger Ebert.
  In 2001, he starred opposite Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal, as Mason Verger, the only surviving victim of Hannibal Lecter. He spent six hours per day in the make-up room to achieve the character's hideously disfigured appearance, and went uncredited in the film. It marked the second time that Oldman had appeared opposite Hopkins, who was part of the supporting cast of Bram Stoker's Dracula. He 
caption: Oldman at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International
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