40 Greatest Screen Villains of All Time - Part Two

We all love rooting for our screen heroes but they would be nothing without a great villain to go up against. Almost since the very beginning, cinema has provided plenty of memorable antagonists for us to boo and hiss, as well as a fair few that give us sleepless nights.

Here is the second half of our countdown of forty of the finest.

20. Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects (1995)

Kevin Spacey took his career to the next level in 1995 with two unforgettable villainous roles: His uncredited turn as serial killer John Doe in Seven, and winning an Oscar for playing loquacious low-level grifter Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects.

After a harbour massacre leaves 27 crooks dead, physically disabled conman Verbal finds himself enjoying the company of arrogant Customs Agent Daved Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) in the few hours before he posts bail. During that time, he spins a convoluted yarn about the events leading up to the bloodbath, involving a makeshift team of wronged hoodlums led by Dean Keaton (Gabriel Byrne) and a mythical criminal mastermind called Keyser Soze.

You probably know how the twist plays out already, but Verbal is so integral to how Bryan Singer’s puzzle box thriller hangs together that the film rewards repeat viewings. Spacey threads the narrative with his trademark smarm and quick wit, making him an unlikely villain worth rooting for until the final ingenious reveal.

19. Amy Dunne in Gone Girl (2014)

There are unreliable narrators and there is Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) in David Fincher’s Gone Girl, a slick and coolly effective adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s page-turning bestseller. Teacher Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) returns home on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary to find his wife Amy is missing amid signs of a violent struggle. Over the coming days, the police investigation reveals incriminating clues that point the finger at Nick, and Amy’s diary paints a picture of an unhappy marriage and fears that he planned to kill her.

Around the halfway mark, the film switches perspectives to Amy, who we find alive and well and hiding out in a low-rent Ozarks motel. This is when we discover the truth about the tale. Resentful that her dream man wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, blowing all her money and cheating on her with a younger woman, she has spent a long time meticulously framing him for her own murder.

Rosamund Pike is flawless in the role and deservedly received an Oscar nomination. She’s a cunning and remorseless psychopath who brilliantly plants seeds of suspicion against her husband. When Amy’s plan comes unstuck, she has no qualms about using bloody violence to give herself a way back home and play the victim once again.

18. Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988)

With his cool demeanour and penchant for finely tailored suits, international master criminal Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) is sleek, methodical, and ruthless. He and his gang descend on Nakatomi Plaza during a Christmas Eve party for a daring robbery that Gruber has worked out to the last detail. The only thing he doesn’t bank on is John McClane (Bruce Willis), a wild card cop loose in the building and interfering with his plans.

That’s the set up for a classic game of cat-and-mouse, with Gruber’s calm and urbane front gradually fraying as the outgunned McLane uses his wits to pick off the gang one by one. The dynamic echoes the chemistry between Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau in the great ‘70s subway heist flick The Taking of Pelham One Two Three as both men trade barbs over the airwaves before finally sharing a scene at the end.

Rickman was a RADA-trained actor who enjoyed great success on the stage before he jetted out to Los Angeles at the age of 40 to make his break into Hollywood movies. He not only slipped right in, he set the template for the next decade or so of screen villainy. He’s a delight as Gruber, savouring all his lines as if they were penned by the Bard himself.

17. Frank Booth in Blue Velvet (1986)

Those are the words I hear in my head every time I order a cold pint of Dutch suds, thanks to the implacable fury of the psycho that utters them in Blue Velvet. Dennis Hopper claimed that he really wanted to play Frank Booth because he was the character in real-life, which is an odd thing to tell people. After all, Booth is a dangerously unhinged gangster who gets off on huffing poppers through a mask and holding forlorn torch singer Dorothy (Isabella Rosselini) as a sex slave.

Between outbursts of obscenities and violence, we get some hints that Booth’s hyper-aggressive behaviour stems from deep inner turmoil. He seeks a submissive role with Dorothy before his rage takes over and he seems to harbour some repressed feelings of homosexuality focused on clean-cut Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan). Notably, the only person able to placate Booth’s anger is the effeminate “suave fucker” Ben (Dean Stockwell), who brings the criminal to tears with a mimed rendition of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams.”

It’s an incendiary performance from Hopper but far from one-note thanks to these intriguing clues, making Frank Booth much more than a personification of the sleaze and ugliness that lies beneath the surface of Jeffrey’s white picket fence hometown.

16. Gollum in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001 - 2003)

I watched Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy again recently with my kids, something that they thoroughly enjoyed. It also convinced me that Gollum is still the greatest and most fully realised CGI put on screen to date.

We only get a few tantalising glimpses of him in The Fellowship of the Ring, but he bursts fully formed into The Two Towers almost from the start. With the fellowship now disbanded, the most absorbing storyline is the insane and treacherous creature following Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and Samwise Gamgee (Sean Astin) into Mordor in the hope of recovering his coveted “Precious.”

The CGI used to magic Gollum into existence is a little dated now, but that hardly matters. Good special effects should be invisible rather than draw attention to themselves, and I stopped noticing that Gollum wasn’t real after only a few moments of his first appearance. Much of the credit goes to Andy Serkis for the brilliant vocal and motion-captured performance that brings the wretched former hobbit so vividly to life.

15. Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List (1993)

It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when the horrors of the Holocaust were barely touched upon in feature films. Then came Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg’s sober and compassionate story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), the Nazi Party member and profiteer who saved over 1,000 Jews from almost certain death.

The film didn’t shy away from showing the harsh realities of the atrocity, but arguably the reason it found such success was that it identified a note of hope amid events of almost unimaginable evil. That evil was personified by the key figure of Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), the cruel and unpredictable commandant who lords it over the Płaszów concentration camp from his hilltop villa.

Goeth was a major breakthrough film role for Fiennes after a successful career on stage as a Shakespearian actor. It’s a mercurial performance that finds nuance in such an irredeemable monster. Goeth is troubled by his infatuation with his Jewish maid, Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz), a weakness that he resolves with physical abuse. He is also briefly touched by Schindler’s notion of mercy, which he toys with before reverting to his usual homicidal tendencies. Fiennes is totally magnetic in the role and criminally lost out to Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.

14. Norman Stansfield in Leon: The Professional (1994)

After Alan Rickman opened the floodgates, the next decade was primed for other British actors to try their hand at playing the bad guy in big Hollywood movies. Top of the heap was Gary Oldman as Norman Stansfield in Leon, a sleazy pill-popping cop who loves listening to Beethoven while blowing away entire families.

It’s an exhilarating crazed turn from Oldman, typified by the strange effect those pills have on him. Whenever he pops one, his back arches, his neck contorts, his teeth grind, and a vein bulges from his forehead as he shudders from an orgasmic high. He’s totally over-the-top, but Oldman skilfully avoids overstepping the line into parody – he would cross that threshold a few years later in The Fifth Element.

Stansfield is a one-dimensional character, but he is also a finely detailed one. We get all we need to know about him from the way he swaggers around like he owns the place, the seedy tan suit and rumpled shirt, and the strand of sweaty hair across his forehead. It’s also in the sheer enthusiasm with which he embraces fury and violence. He’s in his element and the apartment massacre is his symphony.

13. Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000)

American Psycho could have been unwatchable if it stuck too close to the source material from Bret East Ellis. Thankfully, the project landed with Mary Harron instead of Oliver Stone, and she wisely dialled back the gut-churning violence and amped up the comedy, resulting in a pitch-black satire of shallow consumerist society.

Key to the film’s success is Christian Bale’s performance as Patrick Bateman, a yuppie serial killer with a taste for hookers, Huey Lewis and the News, and Silian Rail typeface. Friends and colleagues warned him that taking the role could have been career suicide, but he embraced the lunacy and created one of the most iconic screen villains of the 21st Century.

Bateman’s bloodlust (real or imagined) is undercut by a desperate need to fit into a superficial world where he is consistently mistaken for other douchebag Wall Street clones. Even his manic late confession falls on deaf ears because everyone in his world is so completely self-absorbed that they’re incapable of listening to what anyone else says. Bale is hilarious in the role and it re-launched his Hollywood career to even greater heights.

12. Dr. Julian Karswell in Night of the Demon (1957)

Perhaps best known for his role as Zeus in Jason and the Argonauts, Niall MacGinnis was a wonderful character actor who appeared in around 80 movies. His finest moment came playing Dr. Julian Karswell in Night of the Demon, a masterfully spooky adaptation of Casting the Runes by M.R. James. 

Playing a portly occultist who sets a fiery demon on his enemies by passing them a slip of parchment containing arcane runes, MacGuinness succeeded in one-upping his character from the source material. James was great at spinning a ghostly yarn, but characterisation wasn’t his strong point. The actor relishes every word of the witty and intelligent screenplay, fully fleshing out Karswell into a charming, sinister, erudite, and thin-skinned cult leader who is devoted to his elderly mother. He’s well-matched by Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), a smarmy sceptic who arrives from the States to expose his activities as a fraud, and their verbal sparring is one of the film’s many highlights.

Karswell delights in demonstrating his mastery of black magic to his rival before the demon comes to claim him, but he also knows that summoning such powers carries a high risk to himself. Naturally, Holden starts taking the supernatural seriously just in time, reversing the spell and leaving Karswell to face the very demon he has conjured up.

11. Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men (2008)

Hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) walks into a gas station in the middle of nowhere and the ageing proprietor (Gene Jones) makes the mistake of engaging him in a little friendly small talk. Chigurh responds by challenging him to a coin toss without telling the old man what he stands to lose. Having already seen Chigurh cold-bloodedly murder a cop and a motorist, we know exactly what is at stake and the tension is unbearable.

Adapting Cormac McCarthy’s novel, the scene in No Country For Old Men is one of the finest that the Coen Brothers have written. Chigurh is also one of cinema’s most chilling villains, an implacable killing machine as dead-eyed as the shark in Jaws. It is the little details that make him so unsettling, from his his weapon of choice, a captive bolt pistol, to his peculiar haircut. The style was taken from a photo of a guy in a Mexican brothel and it could have been ridiculous. As worn by Bardem, however, it’s just another indication that Chigurh is completely removed from the modern world around him.

10. Norman Bates in Psycho (1960)

When Robert Bloch wrote Psycho in the late ‘50s, he later said that he had based the story on the grisly crimes of Ed Gein and not the murderer himself. When Alfred Hitchcock gambled on a low-budget feature based on the book, he took a step further away from the real killer. Ed Gein was a grizzled backwoods hick and Hitchcock cast handsome Anthony Perkins instead, a young actor who looked like he wouldn’t harm a fly.

Perkins is terrific in the role, making Norman charming in a pensive boy-next-door kind of way, especially in the scene where he and Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) bond slightly over milk and sandwiches. Her abrupt murder was a huge shock for audiences at the time, and it was also a big surprise for people to discover that Norman was dressing up as his deceased mother. Viewers weren’t the armchair psychologists that we are today, so Hitchcock also added a clunky expository scene explaining Norman’s split personality to help people wrap their heads around it. 

Although it probably won’t surprise many modern viewers, Psycho still works beautifully. Hitchcock wasn’t called the Master of Suspense for nothing, and he skillfully transfers the audience’s sympathies to Norman after Marion’s brutal murder. It’s a testament to the likeability of Perkins’ performance that we end up rooting for him even when we should want him to get caught.

9. Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Horror fans enjoy debating the relative merits of the three big icons of the slasher genre: Michael Myers from the Halloween series, implacably pursuing his victims without ever breaking stride; Jason Vorhees of Friday the 13th fame, a hulking undead killing machine; and Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street, a supernatural trickster stalking people in their dreams.

Freddy (Robert Englund) is the ghost of a child killer who was murdered years earlier by the community’s parents, and now he’s back for revenge. He is literally the stuff of nightmares, preying on his victims when they are asleep and at their most vulnerable – one of the film’s great images is Freddy’s claw emerging between the naked thighs of a young woman who has carelessly nodded off in the bathtub.

Played with fiendish glee by Englund, Freddy looks terrifying with his hideously burnt face, bladed glove, fedora, and striped orange-and-green jersey, a combo specifically chosen by Craven because the clash of colours is harsh on the eye. Forget the sequels which got silly very quickly – Wes Craven’s original film is still the real deal.

8. The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939)

In real-life, Margaret Hamilton was a kind woman who worked as a kindergarten teacher and advocated for pet welfare charities, which is ironic for an actor most famous for terrorising a young girl and threatening her dog in The Wizard of Oz. Later books and films like Wicked and Oz the Great and Powerful sought to humanise the character, which defeated the whole point: The Wicked Witch of the West is such a wonderfully scary creation because she is an archetype, a shrieking, vindictive incarnation of pure wickedness.

There were earlier versions, too, in silent films based on L. Frank Baum’s novel. But Technicolor enabled one crucial change from the book that cements her in our collective imagination. The witch’s ghastly green skin clashes with the bright primary colours of the ruby red slippers, the yellow brick road, and the blue of Dorothy’s dress, making her seem so weird and unnatural. She’s a freakish outsider living in a grim castle with her scary flying monkeys, and she delights in terrorising others out of sheer malice. Significantly, she is also the dreamland version of Mrs. Gulch back in the real world, the spiteful old spinster who tries taking Toto away in the black-and-white opening sequence. 

7. Harry Powell in Night of the Hunter (1957)

Another entry for Robert Mitchum, who gave perhaps the performance of his career in Charles Laughton’s fable-like masterpiece. The Night of the Hunter was so poorly received that he never directed another film, which was a great loss to cinema. As for Mitchum, the Hollywood bad boy excelled in playing Harry Powell, a murderous chancer who poses as a fire-and-brimstone preacher to prey on lonely widows for their money. When he hears that the loot from a bank robbery is stashed somewhere on the farmstead of Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) and her kids, he descends on their home and worms his way into Willa’s affections.

Once Powell has disposed of his new bride, he pursues the children along the river. Prefiguring Michael Myers in Halloween 20 years later, he has the almost supernatural ability to stay on their trail no matter where they go or how fast they run, tracking them slowly and relentlessly. Luckily, they wash up with Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish), a kindly spinster who sees through Powell’s charade from the moment she lays eyes on him. 

Harry Powell is one of cinema’s greatest villains and Robert Mitchum’s luxuriantly menacing performance is mesmerising. He creates a portrait of an avaricious soul-dead man who has the ability to fool all the grown-ups with his snake oil, convincing them with his simplistic sermons. All but Rachel Cooper, a force of pure good who proves an unlikely match for Powell’s malevolent shadow of evil.

6. Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The thing about Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) is that he doesn’t appear very threatening at first glance. Even when incarcerated in a dungeon, he is neat, courteous, and carries himself with the air of a man with fine taste. Compared to the raving loonies in the cells neighbouring his, there is little to suggest that anything is off, apart from his unnerving stillness and intense gaze.

Gracing the screen for only around 16 minutes in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter dominates the film - Hopkins received the Best Actor award with one of the shortest performances to win a lead acting Oscar. We hear about the terrible things he has done to earn the nickname “Hannibal the Cannibal,” but we instinctively side with him. Compared to Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), he’s a serial killer we might want to have dinner with, although we’d have to be careful not to offend his good manners to avoid becoming the main course. Then, in the final act, we see what he is truly capable of as he executes an ingenious and gruesome escape plan. 

Other great actors have played Lecter before and since. Brian Cox took the role in Michael Mann’s Manhunter, and Mads Mikkelsen put another spin on the character in the TV series. Now Hannibal Lecter is a pop culture icon, no doubt others will play him again in the future. But in a century’s time, it will be the Hopkins version that everyone remembers.

5. Annie Wilkes in Misery (1990)

Can you imagine Angelica Huston or Bette Midler playing Annie Wilkes, the number one fan of author Paul Sheldon? Luckily, they both turned down the role and left the door open for Kathy Bates, a Tony Award-nominated stage actor who was virtually unknown in the world of movies. She formed great chemistry with James Caan, who got his part after a long list of big Hollywood actors backed away, some of them dismissing the role because they thought it was too passive.

Director Rob Reiner and screenwriter William Goldman sanded off some of the nastier edges to Stephen King’s novel, making it as much of a dark comedy as it is a suspenseful thriller. Bates inhabits the role fully and she goes big with it, veering wildly from simpering fangirl to hollering psycho. 

Although she only stands around 5’2” Bates was bulky enough to believably convey physical threat to Sheldon, and Reiner emphasises the peril by mostly shooting her from low angles as she looms over the author’s bed. It’s a testament to her skill as an actor that she is still terrifying even when using aw-shucks phrases like “oogie mess” and “dirty birdy,” and with good reason – as Sheldon finds out when she realises he has tried to escape, Annie is pretty handy with a sledgehammer.

4. Harry Lime in The Third Man (1949)

Vienna is the city of great composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Mahler. Yet it is often the work of a lesser-known artist that you hear as you stroll through its streets, the peculiar zither music of Anton Karras from The Third Man. Over 75 years since its first release, Carol Reed’s noir masterpiece is as enduringly popular as ever, and much of that goes down to its villain, Harry Lime.

Much like Hannibal Lecter, Lime is another example of how less is often more. Played with delicious roguishness by Orson Welles, he doesn’t appear until roughly halfway through the picture, but he dominates the whole film. Every conversation is about him as Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) tries to get to the bottom of the mysterious death of his old friend, who has offered him a job in the city. As Martins delves deeper, the more it becomes apparent that Lime wasn’t such a great guy after all. Indeed, he was a black market racketeer making a fortune selling dodgy penicillin to hospitals, resulting in the death and maiming of sick children.

Troublingly, this hardly matters when we finally meet Lime in the greatest screen entrance of all time, suddenly appearing in a darkened doorway with a devilish grin on his face. Like Martins and Lime’s former lover Anna (Alida Valli), we’re instantly smitten. Who else but a maverick like Orson Welles could have pulled off this trick? 

Welles’ contribution to the film was immense, including the famous “Cuckoo Clock” speech which reportedly sprang from his mind. Lime eventually gets his comeuppance, but fear not: Welles reprised the role in a prequel radio series called The Lives of Harry Lime, complete with zither theme, now available on YouTube.

3. Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

With her stony humourless glare, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) is a person completely devoid of empathy. What is worse, her calm voice and soothing platitudes mask a mean streak a mile wide. Not exactly the kind of person you’d want supervising the care of vulnerable men with mental health issues, but that’s the state of play when Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) feigns insanity to avoid hard labour in a prison work camp.

The Big Nurse briefly meets her match in the unruly figure of McMurphy, who rallies the browbeaten men on the ward to kick back against her tyrannical authority and regain a little self-esteem. The problem is, Ratched holds all the cards, and McMurphy finds himself perilously at her mercy. Their clash of wills leads to a conclusion that is simultaneously harrowing and triumphant.

If you have any doubt regarding Nurse Ratched’s lofty standing in this list, consider how she calmly and cruelly shames Billy (Brad Dourif), the stammering kid who blossoms in McMurphy’s presence. Rid of his stutter after sleeping with one of the rebel’s good time gal pals, Billy seems ready to step out into the world as a rejuvenated young man. Yet Nurse Ratched knows exactly how to chop him off at the knees, provoking him to slash his own throat in fear of the consequences. It’s painful to watch, and we question why she does it. Is it a deep-seated devotion to duty, a calculated way of getting back at McMurphy, just plain evil, or a combination of all three?

We’ve all met Nurse Ratcheds during our life, small petty people with a big bunch of keys who relish the clout they hold over folks further down the ladder. Almost 50 years on, the Big Nurse still stands as one of the clearest representations of the abuse of authority, a totemic and fearful symbol of The Man.

2. Darth Vader in Star Wars Episodes IV - VI (1977 - 1983)

True story: When I was about five years old my dad took me to see Darth Vader at our local toy store. After a long wait, he marched out from the staff room and put his fist through a cardboard box. I absolutely bricked it and ran for my life!

Vader is one of cinema’s most iconic villains although his power has been watered down over the years. In the endless cash cow of the Star Wars franchise he has been milked for all he is worth, starting with George Lucas’s dreadful prequels. Each appearance or extra character beat only serves to diminish his menace. 

But we still have the memory of the original trilogy, which gave him enough of a redemptive arc to pay off so satisfyingly in Return of the Jedi. I always find it amazing that we can “see” his emotional turmoil when Emperor Palpatine is zapping Luke, even though his mask is totally expressionless.

That all worked well, but he was at his most fearsome in the opening scene of A New Hope, a daunting shadow striding into a pure white corridor and stepping over rebel bodies as he sought to recover the Death Star plans. It was a simple entrance, but it told us all we needed to know before he even said or did anything: This guy is the baddest news in the galaxy.

1. Joker in The Dark Knight (2008)

I’m not a big fan of superhero movies in general but The Dark Knight looks better with each passing year that the MCU and the DCU rumble on. It has real gravitas and stakes, and it also has the greatest screen villain of all time: Heath Ledger’s Joker.

Many actors have made a memorable impression as Batman’s biggest archenemy (even Jared Leto at least tried to do something different), but Ledger’s performance is the one by which all Jokers, and super-villains in general, will be measured for many years to come.

Christopher Nolan wanted to make him genuinely scary for a change and wisely chose not to give Joker a backstory beyond his own unreliable tales. The character worked all the better for it, a true agent of chaos wandering into Gotham and almost bringing the city to its knees with a string of fiendish plans. His mystery is part of the allure as we’re never completely sure what his motives are beyond causing utter mayhem.

As for Ledger, the Australian heartthrob was barely recognisable beneath the messy makeup and lank green hair. It’s a complete physical transformation, from the hunched shoulders and odd limping gait to the way he constantly flicks out his tongue to feel the scars in the corners of his mouth. It’s a huge performance, but not a showboating one. Compared to Jack Nicholson’s take on the character, Ledger’s Joker is almost naturalistic, fitting perfectly into Nolan’s realistic vision of the Batman mythos.

Ledger was posthumously awarded an Oscar for his performance after he passed away aged just 28. I often think about Joker’s final scene in the movie, dangling upside down and monologuing about how he and Batman are fated to battle wits forever. It’s a fitting end and I’m glad Nolan didn’t kill him off – Ledger achieved some kind of immortality as his Joker lived on.

So there you have it, my 40 greatest screen villains of all time. What are your picks? Who would you include in the list and who would you drop? Let us know!