10 Ridiculously Over-The-Top Acting Performances

5. Gary Oldman - Leon: The Professional

leon To Hollywood, Gary Oldman has been the go-to-guy for gloriously eccentric villains for multiple decades and the best example of this is his portrayal of corrupt cop Norman Stansfield in Leon: The Professional. Oldman takes the standard bent cop cliche and runs as far as possible with it. He turns him into a Beethoven loving, cocaine snorting psychopath of the highest order, and with that, one of the most purely entertaining villains from the past two decades. Whilst Oldman's very best performances are the one's where he is completely restrained (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), nobody does ludicrously over-the-top quite like him. He always manages to come up with unique little things that make his characters stand out. The energy he emits in Leon is unrivalled and is by far the craziest performance he has ever done, even topping his slightly surreal small performance in True Romance.
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Articles published under the WhatCulture name denote collective efforts of a number of our writers, both past and present.