Gary Oldman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. Rosencrantz €“ Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990)

Veteran playwright Tom Stoppard is best known for his theatre work, but has been known to dip into Hollywood from time to time. He provided draft scripts for WWII thriller Enigma, the inexplicably Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love, and even provided the final rewriter of Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. Just once has he directed a film himself, though. And it was in an adaptation of his own play, the celebrated Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, a playful look at a couple of minor characters from Hamlet. In Shakespeare's original play the pair are childhood friends of the Danish prince brought along to keep his mind off of madness and murder €“ with varying results €“ and spend a relatively small amount of time on stage. Both Stoppard's play and film casts them as the heroes of their own story, unaware of the larger plot machinations of Hamlet and their place in it, instead bumbling across the Danish (in fact Yugoslavian) landscape chatting nonsense. And Oldman is perfectly cast to dispense said nonsense, his Rosencratz accidentally inventing the hamburger and discovers gravity...without ever realising it. Some perfect comic timing and theatrical line delivery.