The charismatic and intense character player Tom Sizemore quickly ascended from college and graduate dramatic studies to the world of regional and Off-Broadway theater to finally become an increasingly familiar face in Hollywood genre films in the 1990s, but his thriving career was eventually derailed by a lengthy string of troubles with women, drugs and the law.

1989 marked a career turning point for the young actor as Sizemore appeared in an ABC TV-movie, small roles in four features, including playing a glib con who befriends Sylvester Stallone in the slammer in Lock Up and an angry wheelchair-bound vet in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, and memorably as the love interest of Colleen McMurphy (Dana Delany) in a story arc on the Vietnam drama China Beach (ABC).

Sizemore brings a spontaneity and humor to his often intense, fast-talking characters (usually cops or cons on the fringe), that raises them above the cliches they could have been. He stood out in several of his five feature credits in 1993. As the wisecracking cop partner of Chris Penn, the actor held his own against some accomplished scene-stealers in True Romance. He shone in Hearts and Souls in a more substantial supporting role as the amiable hood/guardian angel of Robert Downey Jr. Sizemore also registered as a stolid Bat Masterson allied with Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp and expanded his rep playing an obsessive detective on the trail of a murderous couple, reteaming with director Oliver Stone in Natural Born Killers (both 1994). He remained busy in 1995 as Devil in a Blue Dress found him playing an enigmatic fixer who draws P.I. Easy Rawlings (Denzel Washington) into a dangerous case. Strange Days cast the actor as a sleazy detective while Heat had him as one of Robert De Niro's partners-in-crime.