Love them or hate them, most movies stars have a schtick. Whether it’s Jim Carrey’s funny faces, Mike Myers and his Scottish accents, or Tom Cruise running a lot, these people get paid millions of dollars to more or less do the same thing and reprise more or less the same character(s) over and over again. That they can do it so well is the reason that they’re movie stars and that they make it look so easy is the reason why most people can’t be a movie star.

Then there’s Gary Oldman.

Gary Oldman is an actor. Although he is very famous, he’s not a movie star in the traditional sense. Instead of being made to more or less play the same role over and over, he is instead chameleon-like and almost completely disappears in to the character that he plays. For example, his role as Zorg in The Fifth Element is nothing like Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which in turn is nothing like Commissioner Gordon in Batman Begins, or Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies. Many people don’t even realize that all of these roles were played by the same person.

This is a clip of Gary Oldman recording the voice of Lord Shen for last year’s animated movie Kung-Fu Panda 2. It’s a great opportunity to watch a master at work. What most of us wouldn’t give to be this talented!