The Best Villains in Movie History

Pennywise

Played By: Tim Curry

Movie: It (1990)

The premise of Stephen King’s instant classic novel It is that clowns are secretly terrifying. The only thing scarier than clowns? Really long books: It is truly scary in its length, clocking in at over a thousand pages. While it was a critical and commercial success, It didn’t become truly popular until the ABC miniseries adaptation in 1990 that introduced the world to its now iconic villain: Pennywise. Almost always the first person that comes up when you Google “evil clown,” Pennywise is an alien monster who takes the form of what you fear most (usually a clown in the miniseries) so that it can scare kids and eat them, because, according to him, they taste better when they’re scared. Not only is Pennywise the personification of child fear, but also bigotry and hate, with the number of historical atrocities his presence has inspired in the town of Derry, Maine. A scary clown could potentially come off as cheesy, but Tim Curry’s performance is perfectly unsettling and memorable. A scarier clown has yet to be seen in pop culture, and hopefully never will be.

Chucky

Played By: Brad Dourif

Movie: Child’s Play (1988)

“Hi, I’m Chucky. Wanna play?” Never has such an innocent phrase sounded so terrifying. 1988’s Child’s Play brought horror into a new realm: a child’s playbox. Mother Karen Barclay thought she was giving her son Andy the best gift when she managed to snag him a coveted Good Guy doll, one of the hottest selling toys on the market. Little did she know, this Good Guy doll is actually possessed by the spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray and now goes by Chucky. Chucky is deeply scary in that a doll is obviously the last thing you expect to be a psychopathic murderer; even worse, he starts framing young Andy for his crimes. Chucky’s face quickly turns from welcoming and kind to mean and intimidating as he sustains more damage, giving him one of the more memorable horror villain visages. Chucky’s voice is also unsettling, especially when he stops saying his pre-programmed catchphrases and starts cursing up a storm and terrorizing people. After watching Child’s Play, many parents were understandably wary about getting those newfangled talking dolls for their kids: who could blame them?

The Wicked Witch of the West

Played By: Margaret Hamilton

Movie: The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Not unlike Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Wizard of Oz is one of those family films that leaves astute viewers wondering how little kids could ever watch it without crying for mommy. Chiefly responsible for such a reaction is the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), the evil fantasy world version of Miss Almira Gulch, who demands that little protagonist Dorothy's dog, Toto, be taken away after the pooch bit Miss Gulch.

Whenever she talks, the Wicked Witch's voice seeps into one's brain, with its shrill pitch followed by that cackling laugh. Hamilton's nightmarish creation doesn't even need to open her mouth, though, in order to engender unease—her pointy nose, long fingers, and devilish eyes tap directly into childhood fear. —Matt Barone

Thanos

Played By: Josh Brolin

Movie: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Over the last ten years, Marvel Studios spent time building up the Thanos. While diehards already knew what he was building towards (gaining all of the Infinity Stones to take out half of the universe), seeing him sporadically in post-credits scenes could’ve been a disaster. What if 2018’s Infinity War was a brick? There was a lot riding on Thanos being the true behemoth to hit the MCU. Luckily, the Mad Titan was everything we’d hoped for, and more. Throughout Infinity War, Thanos laid down his reasoning for why it made sense to decimate half of the universe—then he gathered the Stones and did exactly that. It was a gutpunch that rocked the MCU, and had fans going back for repeated viewings. The question isn’t if the MCU will recuperate from what Thanos did; it’s will they be able to craft a villain as devious as—or even more menacing than—Thanos. —khal

Norman Bates

Played By: Anthony Perkins

Movie: Psycho (1960)

Slasher flicks typically don't offer much in the way of dynamic villains. All a slice-and-dice flick's killer needs to satisfy the masses is a mask, a knife, and some thinly conceived motive. The great slashers, however—like the grandaddy of them all, Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 adaptation of Robert Bloch's novel Psycho—work on much deeper levels of psychological complexity.

The film's central figure, young hotel proprietor/mamas's boy Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), is—Spoiler Alert—a schizophrenic, homicidal maniac who dresses up in women's clothing before offing people. It all stems back to when Norman murdered his mother for spending more time with her new lover than with him. Since killing her, Norman feels tremendous guilt and, in order to keep "mother" alive in his head, he's developed an extra personality that speaks in mother's tone.

That's much different from slasher movies about bullied social outcasts enacting their adulthood vengeance by targeting bimbos with huge breasts and non-existent personalities. In Psycho, the blame for Norman's problem is placed on those mommy issues, providing another, and perhaps the biggest, reason for critics to call the film misogynistic: It's all the woman's fault. But in Norman's eyes, it truly is her fault.

You're not buying that? Well, remember this: He's a psycho. Killing her triggered his worst mental imbalances, and her voice is always in his thoughts, controlling his actions—stabbing Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) to death in that now-iconic shower, for instance. —Matt Barone

Hannibal Lecter

Played By: Anthony Hopkins

Movie: The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

There have been many cannibals in film history, but only one who could make us swear off our favorite meal: liver and fava beans with a nice chianti. A brilliant psychiatrist and human flesh-eating serial killer who appears in five movies and an upcoming television series, Dr. Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter is at his best in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs, where the imprisoned doc guides young FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in a game of quid pro quo as she pursues “Buffalo Bill,” a homicidal sociopath who’s fashioning himself a woman suit out of real woman-skin.

Even while caged or restrained, the evil genius is terrifying because, as Starling learns, given the chance, Lecter will eat somebody’s tongue right out of their mouth and his pulse won’t even get above 85. And when he does finally shed blood, having calculated his way to an escape opportunity, it's gloriously stomach-turning, gentle classical music playing while Lecter beats his guards to death with a baton like a conductor leading a symphony orchestra. For his curtain call, he slips through police lines in an ambulance by wearing the face he removed from one of the dead men.

Nobody wants a psychiatrist in their head, but after watching Anthony Hopkins’ Academy Award-winning performance, it's impossible to get Lecter out of yours. —Justin Monroe

The Xenomorph

Played By: Bolaji Badejo

Movie: Alien (1979)

Hands down, the most memorable scene in Ridley Scott's seminal sci-fi/horror classic Alien is also one of cinema's all-time greatest shock moments: Nostromo executive officer Kane (John Hurt), having recently been face-hugged by a small crab-like alien, suddenly begins convulsing at the spaceship's dinner table, before his chest bursts open and a tiny E.T. slithers across the floor.

What Alien's chestbuster rapidly becomes is the film's scariest attribute. Known as the Xenomorph, the tall, lanky bastard—armed with a little fang-filled mouth inside its bigger mouth—is a truly awe-inspiring creation, one that comes from the mind of Swiss artist H.R. Giger and has yet to be matched in its nightmarish beauty. —Matt Barone

Baby Jane Hudson

Played By: Bette Davis

Movie: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Fame can be a powerful, uncontrollable drug, especially for those who experience it early in their lives and watch it fade away just too soon. Case in point: Baby Jane Hudson (Bette Davis), a former child star whose career devolved into a succession of box office flops while her sister, Blanche (Joan Crawford), has achieved much more success. And Jane isn't the least bit happy about that.

A car accident seriously cripples Blanche and forces her to rely on Jane for care. Unfortunately, Jane's endless failures have sent her over the edge of sanity and straight into a booze-fueled psychosis marked by poorly applied makeup and violent mood swings. Stuck inside the house with Jane 24/7, Blanche is helpless against her demented sister's vicious impulses. For lunch, Jane serves Blanche a dead rat. When Blanche tries to call for help, Jane mercilessly beats her.

Depicting the horrors of fallen celebrity and familial dysfunction, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is psychological horror at its best. Bette Davis will haunt your dreams. —Matt Barone

Alex

Played By: Malcolm McDowell

Movie: A Clockwork Orange (1971)

For all the ugly and unethical torment poor Alex endures, never forget that in the first 10 minutes of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange he rapes a woman while gleefully reciting the lyrics to "Singin' in the Rain."

Yes, Alex becomes the means through which viewers are made to understand free will in the face of government control, but he's still a monster. Malcolm McDowell imbues him with terrible charisma and, let's be honest, cool, but he's still an amoral beast who'd kick your teeth in without a second thought. —Ross Scarano

Amy Dunne

Played By: Rosamund Pike

Movie: Gone Girl (2016)

Here's the thing: Amy Dunne made some points. Yes, she was a psychopath (literally, according to Health), and yes, she murdered Neil Patrick Harris in cold blood. But she knew what she was talking about when it came to casual misogyny, the false promises of marriage, and of course, the "Cool Girl" trope—seriously, I dare any man to ever call me "cool" again.

Amy's transformation from unassuming, doting wife to criminal mastermind and ruthless killer is a bit iconic, and you're lying if you say you weren't at least kind of rooting for her to pull it off. The meticulous planning that goes into her disappearance, the clues she leaves for Nick (Ben Affleck), her manipulation of an entire nation—she fully snapped. The aforementioned murder of one Desi Collings (Harris) is one of the wildest scenes in the history of film, and that image of our villain practically bathing in his blood is permanently burned into our brains. "What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?" —Carolyn Bernucca

Agent Smith

Played By: Hugo Weaving

Movie: The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003)

Computer code is the international language of nerds, but in a world where machines rule and harvest enslaved human beings as a bioelectrical power source by plugging them into the “Matrix,” a giant network that simulates life, it’s bleep-blooping badass.

Agent Smith is the human-loathing leader of three sentient computer programs with artificial intelligence that look like Secret Service agents and guard the Matrix from the inside. Alerted to activity within the network via an earpiece, and able to bend the rules of physics and control any non-awakened human’s simulated body within the Matrix, he poses a significant threat to the freedom fighters who must re-enter the system to liberate others.

Seemingly deleted at end the first movie by a fully conscious Neo (Keanu Reeves), who finally perceives the Matrix as nothing but moving computer codes, in the inferior sequels Mr. Smith appears transformed into a self-replicating virus and is even able to escape the network and enter the real world. Geek Squad can’t help you with that. —Justin Monroe

Annie Wilkes

Played By: Kathy Bates

Movie: Misery (1990)

You've suffered a terrible accident. Squealing metal, crunching glass, snapped bones—these are just fragments of the painful kaleidoscope-like memory of the moment that landed you here, in this bed, where you're trapped. Your movement is limited. Like a child, you're dependent on the person caring for you.

In a stereotypical porno, your wounds would heal in 30 seconds flat and then you'd fuck your nurse. In Misery, the film adaptation of Stephen King's 1987 novel, your nurse is named Annie Wilkes and she'll break your ankles with a sledgehammer before she'll let you get away.

Kathy Bates won an Oscar for her portrayal of Wilkes, a deranged lover of fiction who winds up caring for her favorite novelist, Paul Sheldon, after he's injured in a car accident. She'll help Sheldon on the condition that he pen a new novel resurrecting the character she loves so dearly, Misery Chastain. Both the film and the novel milk the helplessness one feels during a hospital visit for everything it's worth, crippling the viewer with fear. —Ross Scarano

The Terminator

Played By: Arnold Schwarzenegger

Movie: The Terminator (1984)

The word "monster" implies many things: enormous animals, undead stalkers, pint-sized demons. Monsters come in all guises. In the world introduced in James Cameron's seminal The Terminator, they're actually robots, though their metallic forms don't stop them from being some of the deadliest monsters in all of cinema.

Built by Skynet, an advanced artificial intelligence from the future, the killing machines, or "endoskeletons," were designed to resemble humans, from the ways they move to their physical makeups, usually covered in synthetic skin. The key difference being, of course, that flesh-and-blood folks can't withstand dozens of bullets, nor can they intimidate foes by simply flashing their red, laser-beam eyes. — Matt Barone

Anton Chigurh

Played By: Javier Bardem

Movie: No Country for Old Men (2007)

"What's this guy supposed to be, the ultimate badass?" asks Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) in No Country for Old Men.

"Nah, I don't think that's how I'd describe him," answers Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), a man with insider information about hired killer Anton Chigurh. He continues: "I guess I'd say he doesn't have a sense of humor."

But of course the Coen brothers do, and so Chigurh provides some of the deadpan comedy in the dry-as-dust crime-as-process adaptation of McCarthy's novel. Think of his startling cough during the conversation with the gas station clerk—hilarious, if you've got the right perspective.

Like the Judge, the philosophizing antagonist of McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Chigurh is a man with a particular perspective on the world, one concerned with chance, fate, and debts accrued during the course of a human life. His name is inscrutable, his methods unusual. He's more of an idea with the ability to murder you than a person, which is not a knock against Javier Bardem's performance. Indeed, he's perfect for the part: He reveals nothing. —Ross Scarano

Michael Myers

Played By: Nick Castle

Movie: Halloween (1978)

As Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) puts it in writer-director John Carpenter's 1978 slasher trend-setter Halloween, Michael Myers is "purely and simply evil." That iconic white mask is a perfect fit, since, like Myers himself, it's a blank canvas devoid of emotion. The escaped mental patient who murdered his older sister when he was only 6-years-old doesn't speak or show any signs of humanity. And, creepiest of all, he doesn't even have a legitimate motive for killing. It's just what he does.

The greatest Michael Myers moment ever happens in the original '78 film. Having just jammed a large butcher's knife into a teenage boy's chest, pinning the victim against the wall like he's a note, Myers stares at the lifeless, hanging body. And then, very subtly, Myers tilts his head and looks at the corpse in wonderment.

In this scene, Carpenter captures the character's essence: Myers' mind never advanced past that childhood day when he slaughtered his sister. It's a case of arrested development gone horribly wrong. —Matt Barone

Harry Powell

Played By: Robert Mitchum

Movie: The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Imprisoned serial killer Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) lucks up when he learns that his cellmate, who's about to hang for bad robbery, hid a ton of cash before he entered the clink. Since he's, you know, ruthlessly evil, Powell, fresh out of jail and cruising with his "LOVE" and "HATE" tattoos inked across the knuckles of both hands, seduces the executed man's widow, Willa (Shelley Winters), and plays daddy to his two children.

Demonstrating why he's more partial to the "HATE" tat, Powell eventually slices Willa's throat open. It's easy to see why Willa could've been so easily fooled in the first place—Mitchum portrays Powell with an icy charm that's hard not to like. He's the most dangerous kind of murderer: The guy who'll make you want to have a beer with him before he ends you. —Matt Barone

Noah Cross

Played By: John Huston

Movie: Chinatown (1974)

The most memorable movie villains are the charmers, the monsters who win over viewers with beautiful language and sick grins. From the couch or theater seat, they're enjoyable to be around, but only because the viewer doesn't have to share actual air with them.

For instance, take Noah Cross in Roman Polanski's masterful neo-noir Chinatown. In a film full of sunny sleaze, here's the larger-than-life personification of absolute power, played, of course, by John Huston, director of The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, just to name a few. For every brief moment that Cross appears to smile and bite his way through Robert Towne's screenplay, he becomes the insatiable hunger of Hollywood, always wanting more. It's captivating.

The viewer understands he's awful, but it's only until the third-act reveal that you realize the extent of his sins. And once learned, you can't unlearn it, just as you can't keep the terrible sound of the car horn out of your brain once the film has ended. —Ross Scarano

Freddy Krueger

Played By: Robert Englund

Movie: A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Over the years, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) has garnered acclaim more for his comic qualities than his ability to inspire terror. It makes perfect sense, since Englund's brilliant portrayal of the child molester turned knife-glove-wearing dreamland serial killer fully embraces the character's morbid wit.

When writer-director Wes Craven first imagined Freddy, though, the ideas bouncing around in Craven's head were sickly clever. While sleeping, people are at their most vulnerable, making it nearly impossible to stop Krueger from offing whomever he pleases in gory, imaginative ways. Furthermore, nobody can stay awake forever, so, eventually, whether it's after a week or two months or longer, you're going to enter Freddy's domain. And the outcome won't be ideal. —Matt Barone

Darth Vader

Played By: David Prowse, James Earl Jones (voice)

Movie: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Before turning to the dark side, Vader was Anakin Skywalker, a poor slave boy from Tatooine who knew his way around an engine. After suffering the loss of the most important people in his life, including his mother and his wife, his sadness turned into rage, eventually turning him into the masked and heavy-breathing monster sitting in the display cases on fanboys everywhere.

Although Vader is first introduced in the original trilogy as a ruthless cyborg, killing anyone who stands in his path to galactic domination, by the final film, he's using his last ounce of humanity to sacrifices himself to save his son's life. What makes Darth Vader one of the greatest villains ever is the fact that he wasn't really a villain to begin with. —Tara Aquino

Colonel Hans Landa

Played By: Christoph Waltz

Movie: Inglourious Basterds (2009)

In Quentin Tarantino’s history-warping WWII masterpiece Inglourious Basterds, all the Nazis are despicable, but the worst of them is Colonel Hans Landa. “The Jew Hunter,” as he’s known, has earned his nickname by ruthlessly pursuing Jews in hiding throughout Occupied France so they may be executed. An exceptionally adroit detective and smug quadrilingual intellectual, he hunts because those are his orders and he’s good at it, but he doesn’t believe in Nazi ideology or hate Jews. If he did, or didn't take such overt pleasure in a job well done, he might be slightly less loathsome.

The only things Landa truly cares about are personal advancement and the satisfaction he derives from successful sleuthing. So, while he condemns countless Jews to death to move up in the military hierarchy and strangles German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), the mystery traitor who collaborates with the English and Americans and leaves him several corpses in a pub, he sells out Hitler and a bomb-rigged movie house full of Nazi officers, ending the war in exchange for immunity, U.S. citizenship with a hero’s welcome, full military pension, and a home on Nantucket.

Yes, Landa is the absolute worst, and that's saying something in a movie that also features Hitler. —Justin Monroe

Keyser Söze

Played By: Kevin Spacey

Movie: The Usual Suspects (1995)

Who is Keyser Söze? According to "Verbal" Kint (Kevin Spacey), the crippled con man who snitches to police to escape prosecution after surviving a mysterious underworld massacre on a ship, he's either a "spook story that criminals tell their kids at night" or the Devil incarnate. Legend has it that he was a Turkish drug dealer who, rather than surrender his business to rivals who threatened his family, killed his wife and children, then snuffed out his enemies—and everyone they'd ever loved or worked with. At which point he receded into the shadows, remotely running a vast criminal empire and ruthlessly eliminating anyone who discovered his identity or ran afoul of him in any way. Hence the ship massacre.

But really, who is Keyser Söze? Fuck if we know, because—SPOILER ALERT—it turns out that Kint, who claims to have been one of five thieves coerced into pulling a job on the vessel as recompense for unknowingly stealing from Söze, is actually the legendary boss putting on a limp and weaving a story using bullshit and various elements from the office where he's being interrogated. All anyone knows for sure is that he just dispatched a ship full of criminals, sat in police custody, played the authorities masterfully, and walked out the front door a free man.

So, who is Keyser Söze? One bad motherfucker. —Justin Monroe

Max Cady

Played By: Robert De Niro

Movie: Cape Fear (1991)

Max Cady is the reason we fly over the fly-over states. A Pentecostal yokel, he walks free from prison after serving 14 years for a brutal rape, his ripped body covered in scary Biblical vengeance ink, his mind hell-bent on punishing his defense attorney, Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte), who withheld evidence about the victim’s promiscuity that could have gotten him a reduced sentence or even an acquittal.

Cady was illiterate when sent up the river, but he proves himself a slick and devious adversary, always one step ahead and just out of legal reach. Threats and the uncomfortable seduction of Bowden’s unhappy wife and teenage daughter escalate to the rape and face-chewing assault of the lawyer’s onetime jumpoff, a double homicide, and the most disturbing house-boat trip you could ever take on a creepy-ass body of water called Cape Fear.

Thanks, but we’ll stick to New York and Los Angeles. —Justin Monroe

Nurse Ratched

Played By: Louise Fletcher

Movie: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Mildred Ratched's title says "nurse," sure, but she's more of a tyrant than a candy-striper. In director Milos Forman's excellent adaptation of Ken Kesey's already superb 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nurse Ratched (played with stone-cold malevolence by Louise Fletcher) gets off on emotionally terrorizing the misfit patients living in her psychiatric ward. She's sick with power, knowing full well that the mentally impaired crazies under her control are helpless against her tactics.

Initiated by rebellious newcomer Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), the patients have a fun night of debauchery, with alcohol and a couple of McMurphy's female friends. Ratched, having caught them red-handed, pinpoints the stuttering Billy (Brad Dourif) for her wrath: She tells Billy that his mother will find out about what he did, touching a heartbreaking and fear-inducing nerve. And she knows it. Shortly after, Billy commits suicide. And Ratched couldn't care less. —Matt Barone

Frank Booth

Played By: Dennis Hopper

Movie: Blue Velvet (1986)

Played by Dennis Hopper, Frank Booth is David Lynch's version of the bad guy you want to root for. Well, perhaps not root for, but you do appreciate him with each screening of Blue Velvet.

To be sure, the first viewing of the quintessential Lynch film is not fun times. It's traumatizing and disorienting. However, each successive viewing reveals more strange comedy, much of it coming from Hopper's ecstatic performance as a psychotic gangster who loves PBR, amyl nitrite when inhaled through a medical mask, and sexual terror.

Is there a more quotable character in Lynch's world? Nope. How many times have you knocked the Heineken from your friend's hand and shouted, "FUCK THAT SHIT!"? How many times have you asked your best friend to not be a good neighbor to your sister? How many times have you sent someone a lover letter? And by love letter, of course you meant "a bullet from a fucking gun, fucker." —Ross Scarano

T-1000

Played By: Robert Patrick

Movie: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

With its creepy chrome skeleton and tireless drive to eliminate human targets, the 800 series cyborg Terminator forever associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger was supremely badass when it debuted in 1984's The Terminator.

Then, in 1991's sequel, James Cameron introduced the T-1000, a more advanced, chameleon-like shape-shifting liquid metal assassin capable of rapid restoration, spot-on physical and vocal mimicry of people as well as objects, liquefaction to squeeze through tight spaces, and the formation of simple tools and weapons using its malleable "skin."

Suddenly the T-800, which was now a good guy sent back in time to protect John Connor, looked like a toaster with a queer Austrian accent. —Justin Monroe

Peter and Paul

Played By: Frank Giering and Arno Frisch

Movie: Funny Games (1997)

If you've seen Michael Haneke's Amour, the non-English darling of the 2012 awards' season, you don't really know the angry Austrian. The riveting tenderness and humanity of that film? That's a recent development in an already impressive career.

For a look at the other side, proceed directly to 1997's Funny Games, an essay about film's easy violence disguised as a horror flick. Here's the movie: Two guys, Peter and Paul, enter the home of a bougie family and proceed to inflict terrible harm upon the wife, husband, child, and dog. It is a lesson to be inflicted on the viewer through long static takes and a couple of bold formal decisions that won't be spoiled here.

If you doubt the film's desire to instruct, or that Haneke had specific ideas about who needed teaching, know that one decade after the original's release, he made a shot-for-shot remake—in English. —Ross Scarano

The Joker

Played By: Heath Ledger

Movie: The Dark Knight (2008)

What makes The Dark Knight's Joker so bone-chilling is not just his casual gun-slinging and throat-slitting. He's unpredictable. He's impenetrable. There's nothing about him that any feeling human can connect to. Hell, save for a quick mention of how he got his maniacal smile from his father, he doesn't even have much of a motive to be wreaking havoc on the citizens of Gotham. There are no records indicating that he exists. It's as if the Joker simply appeared.

Undoubtedly, the character wouldn't have been so menacing had it not been for the Oscar-winning performance of the late Heath Ledger, who lived alone in a hotel room for a month, where he'd practice the Joker's maniacal mannerisms and even keep a diary recording the villain's thoughts and feelings. Some speculate that the emotional trauma Ledger put himself through took a toll on the actor, leading to his tragic, accidental death. —Tara Aquino

John Doe

Played By: Kevin Spacey

Movie: Se7en (1995)

John Doe's master plan is a work of strategic, perverse genius. Inspired by Christianity's seven deadly sins (lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride), the anonymous, mostly unseen (until Kevin Spacey shows up in Se7en's final act) serial killer handpicks each of his victims based on which of the aforementioned sins they're guilty of; thus, an obese man eats himself to death ("Gluttony"), and a criminal gets strapped to a bed, unfed and immobile, for one year, becoming "Sloth."

Doe's elaborate scheme reaches its apex of during Se7en's final sequence, a knockout battle of wills between the killer and Detective David Mills (Brad Pitt) that involves both "Envy" and "Wrath." Without spoiling it for those who've yet to see director David Fincher's dynamite thriller, let's just say that Mills gets played like a puppet. And all over a cardboard box. —Matt Barone