13 Intense Movie Performances That Are Incredibly Difficult To Watch

9. Gary Oldman - Hannibal

You'd be forgiven for not knowing that Gary Oldman ever starred in one of the Hannibal Lecter movies, so thoroughly swamped in prosthetics was he in wayward sequel Hannibal. The film might have been a relative disaster - especially considering the success of The Silence Of The Lambs - but in antagonist Mason Verger, a Lecter survivor with a penchant for feeding people to pigs under a horrible mask of scars, we still had a brilliant performance.

Oldman's performance is so disarmingly unfamiliar and beautifully affecting that he chose to remain uncredited, preserving the magic of the performance (rather than disowning the quality of the rest of the unfortunate film). Though it subsequently became clear it was Oldman behind the mask, for a while the performance existed in haunting isolation, and it is a true portrait of the grotesque.

It's not just the delivery of his lines - which is awful enough - but the physical performance combined with the character's design is a living reminder of one of Lecter's most heinous crimes, which is hinted at in the film, which makes him difficult to watch at all.