Gary Oldman on His Most Iconic Roles — Including the Movies He'd Rather Forget, Like 'Sid and Nancy'

Gary Oldman, who stars opposite Kevin Costner in the just-released Criminal, has appeared in more than 50 movies during his three-decade-long career. As part of our Role Recall series, we asked him to talk about some of his most well-known performances. (He might be adding another one to that list soon: Reports emerged yesterday that he was in talks to play Winston Churchill.) It turns out he had some strong opinions.

Related: Role Recall: Bruce Dern on Killing John Wayne, Special Gifts From Tarantino, and More

Sid and Nancy (1986)

Of his breakout work as real-life punk rocker Sid Vicious in 1986′s trippy biographical drama Sid and Nancy, he says, “If it comes on TV and I’m channel surfing and I see a second of it, I just want to throw the television out the window,” adding that his performance now seems like “old stuff” to him.

True Romance (1993)

Oldman had a brief, but memorable role as the dreadlocked pimp Drexl in the 1993 crime caper. He remembers the way director Tony Scott offered him a part and how he responded: “[Tony] said, ‘Look he’s a white guy who thinks he’s black and he’s a pimp.’ And I said: ‘I’ll do it.’”

The Fifth Element (1997)

Oldman admits that his daffy turn as the villainous Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg in The Fifth Element was done as a favor to director Luc Besson. “I didn’t read the script,” he says. When Oldman is reminded that the film has become a cult classic, he laughs and says, “I know. That’s the wacky world we live in.”

It’s also a world made more wonderful by many of Oldman’s performances; watch him discuss them, including his work in The Dark Knight and Harry Potter series, in the video above.

Watch Oldman talk about reuniting with his ‘JFK’ costar Kevin Costner for ‘Criminal:’