Whether playing a punk rocker, an assassin, a war vet or a ghoul, Gary Oldman is one of those rare actors who completely disappears into his roles. Though capable of playing almost any type of character, Oldman excels at playing villains and tortured morally ambiguous souls. Born Leonard Gary Oldman in New Cross, South London, he was raised by his mother and two sisters -- his alcoholic father, a welder, left them when Oldman was seven. At age 16, Oldman left high school to work in a sporting goods store; in his spare time, he studied literature and eventually acting under the tutelage of Roger Williams. He went on to work in the Greenwich Young People's Theatre and after attending drama school on a scholarship, worked with the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. He next worked in London's West End and in 1985 won a Best Actor and a Best Newcomer award for his performance in The Pope's Wedding. By this time, Oldman had made his film debut in Remembrance (1981) and had appeared in two television movies, notably Honest, Decent and True (1985). He got his first big break when he was cast as Sid Vicious in the disturbing docu-drama account of the punk rocker's tragic relationship with Nancy Spungen in Sid and Nancy (1986). Oldman's chilling portrayal of the doomed rocker won rave reviews. He turned in a totally different but equally good performance as writer Joe Orton in Stephen Frears' Prick Up Your Ears (1987) and earned a Best Actor nomination from the British Academy of Film and Teleivsion Arts. Oldman moved to the U.S. that year and in 1988 appeared in Nicolas Roeg's Track 29. His first American role in a major Hollywood film was that of alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's JFK(1991). Oldman also gave a creepy but erotic performance in the title role of Francis Ford Coppola's rendition of Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992). In addition to playing such eccentrics as Drexel Spivey, a white pimp who grows dreadlocks and tries to prove himself a black Rastafarian in True Romance (1993), Oldman also plays more conventional characters as can be seen in his straightforward portrayal of a cop in The Professional (1994). Oldman made his directorial bow with Nil by Mouth (1996), a bleak, semi-autobiographical drama about a dysfunctional blue-collar London family that Oldman dedicated to his late father. Oldman returned to playing weirdos in Luc Besson's Fifth Element (1996). Oldman has been married to actresses Lesley Manville and Uma Thurman.