20 Most Intense Movie Performances Of All Time

16. Raymond (Ray Winstone) - Nil By Mouth

When you have Gary Oldman behind the camera (in his directorial debut) and Ray Winstone in front of it playing the abusive, wounded patriarch in an unflinchingly real portrait of South London familial hell, you know you're in for intensity.

Nil By Mouth is horribly personal-feeling (which is assisted by Oldman's "in memory of my father" tribute) and despairingly real, and Winstone's performance as Raymond is harrowing and complex. He's a strange, difficult man, capable of kicking his pregnant wife but also crushing self-pity.

He's a fireball of rage and misplaced masculinity, feeding off how his junkie best friend in turn feeds on his explosions. He acknowledges that he is the product of an abusive, unloving relationship with his own father, and when you realise that this is Oldman offerinf contemplation on forgiveness and his own life, the performance becomes all the more intense.