Gary Oldman: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

3. Sirius Black €“ The Harry Potter Films (2004-2011)

In some ways, Oldman is woefully miscast as the godfather Harry Potter never knew when he shows up in third film The Prisoner of Azkaban (y'know, the best one, that Alfonso Cuaron directed for some reason). The clue's in his name: based on the timeline of the books, Sirius Black should be in his thirties, and a good deal more mad. Instead, Oldman was in his forties, and relatively sane €“ but, going by the book's timeline, everybody's miscast. Still, if you're not a stickler for the source material, there's a lot to love in Gary Oldman's performance as Sirius Black, the man framed for being a part of Voldemort's plot to overthrow the established wizarding order and possibly involved with the killing of Harry Potter's parents. In fact the opposite turns out to be the case, and Oldman's early scenes with the young Daniel Radcliffe elevate the actor's early, slightly less impressive performance skills. Whilst he's never quite as unhinged as Sirius appears in the books (and it's not like Oldman can't do properly bonkers), there's a value to Oldman's version of Black as an older, more wizened but no less self-important and a bit off-kliter prison escapee. As is basically law for major Potter heroes, he gets an emotional death scene, but in the hands of an actor like Gary Oldman? It's anything but rote.