11:49AM, Mar 04, 2009
The versatile British star has brought gravitas to roles ranging from Dracula to Sex Pistol Sid Vicious.
Notable villainous appearances also include assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK and serial killer Mason Verger in Hannibal.
"I don't think Hollywood knows what to do with me. I would imagine that when it comes to romantic comedies, my name would be pretty low down on the list."
The son of a welder and a housewife, he left school aged 16 and won a scholarship to Britain's Rose Bruford Drama College.
He subsequently studied with the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and received Time Out's Fringe Award for Best Newcomer of 1985-1986 before working at York's Theatre Royal.
His film debut came in 1981 in Colin Gregg's Remembrance, which led him to a brief stint working with Mike Leigh in the BBC drama Meantime.
In 1986, he delivered a dramatic tour de force as Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy and went on to play tormented gay British playwright Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears.
He made his American debut in 1989 opposite Kevin Bacon in Criminal Law and teamed with Tim Roth for the big screen version of Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
His portrayal of Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK attracted critical acclaim and then played Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 romantic horror yarn.
Subsequent appearances included True Romance and Romeo Is Bleeding and the evil Stansfield opposite Jean Reno's Leon in 1994.
In 1995 he checked into a rehabilitation clinic for alcoholism after completing the filming of The Scarlett Letter.
He re-teamed with Kevin Bacon for Murder in the First and made a guest appearance in Friends ironically playing an alcoholic actor, a role for which he received an Emmy nomination.
In 1997, Oldman made his directorial debut with Nil by Mouth, a bleak, semi-autobiographical drama about a dysfunctional working class London family.
He subsequently returned to acting with a couple of villainous turns in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element and as a Russian terrorist in the blockbuster Air Force One.
Subsequent roles included Dr Zachary Smith in Lost in Space and Mason Verger, the horribly disfigured victim of Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal.
Offscreen, he provided voice work for a number of high-budget computer games before returning to prominence with the much coveted role of Sirius Black in Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban.
Oldman has been married three times - to actresses Lesley Manville, Uma Thurman and Dionya Fiorentino.
His most work includes the part of good cop Jim Gordon in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and it's stunning sequel, The Dark Knight.
