Gary Leonard Oldman (born 21 March 1958) is an English actor, filmmaker and musician. He rose to prominence in Britain after playing Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy (1986), and Joe Orton in Prick Up Your Ears (1987), for which he received a BAFTA Award nomination; those performances led Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert to describe Oldman as "the best young British actor around".