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Gary Oldman

Gary Oldman
Gary Oldman at the San Diego ComicCon, July 24, 2009
Personal information
Birth nameGary Leonard Oldman
Birth date21 March 1958(age 58)
Place of birthNew Cross, London, England, UK
OccupationActor, filmmaker, musician
Years active1978 � present
SpouseLesley Manville (1987 � 1990)
Uma Thurman (1990 � 1992)
Donya Fiorentino (1997 � 2001)
Alexandra Edenborough (2008 � present)

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Gary Leonard Oldman (born 21 March 1958) is an English actor, voice actor, and musician. A member of the 1980s Brit Pack, Oldman came to prominence in the mid-to-late 1980s with a string of performances that prompted pre-eminent film critic, Roger Ebert, to describe him as "the best young British actor around". He portrayed Sid Vicious in his acclaimed first leading role in Sid and Nancy (1986), and earned a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actor for his second real-life portrayal, Joe Orton, in Prick Up Your Ears (1987). Oldman's role in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) brought him an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Actor, while his performance as a violent gunman for an Irish American gang in State of Grace (1990) earned him greater notice and critical acclaim in the United States. His international breakthrough came with his portrayals of Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK (1991), and Count Dracula in Dracula (1992)-the latter bringing him the Saturn Award for Best Actor. Oldman also attracted media attention for his marriage to actress Uma Thurman in the early 1990s. He went on to play the villain of a number of popular films in the 1990s, including True Romance (1993), Léon (1994) and The Fifth Element (1997). His performance as a zealous Republican congressman in The Contender (2000) earned him Screen Actors Guild- and Independent Spirit Award nominations in the Best Supporting Actor category.

Since the turn of the millennium, Oldman has gained notoriety in heroic roles, such as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter film series, Jim Gordon in Christopher Nolan's Batman film trilogy and George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In addition to leading and central supporting roles in big-budget films, he has frequently acted in independent films, and television shows such as Fallen Angels and Friends-his performance in the latter bringing him an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series in 2001. He is also known for providing the voice of Viktor Reznov in the popular Call of Duty video game series. Oldman has been cited as an influence by a number of successful actors, and has been described as one of the greatest actors never nominated for an Academy Award. Aside from acting, he has served as a producer on several films, and directed, wrote and co-produced Nil by Mouth (1997), a film partially based on his own childhood, for which he was nominated for the 1997 Palme d'Or and won two BAFTA Awards. In 2011, Empire readers voted Oldman an "Icon of Film", in recognition of his contributions to cinema.


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