20 Most Intense Movie Performances Of All Time

20. Begbie (Robert Carlyle) - Trainspotting

Some actors are just made for more volatile roles and Robery Carlyle definitely sits up at the top of that particular pile. Sure, he has range and plays everyman characters well thanks to his Caledonian warmth, but he's never better than he's invited to be explosive.

The role that very much announced that to the world came in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting, in which he played the worryingly unhinged Francis Begbie. He's a hand-grenade with a hair trigger, as quick to violence as he is to profanity and when he's in full-flow, he's terrifying.

Every scene he appears in is uncomfortably tense in the original, but there's a disarming attractiveness to him - which can be the only reason he has "friends". And by the time the sequel came around he had mellowed precisely none. If anything, he was actually worse.