# Comic or good guy actors who made great villains **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 25, 2008, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767 "2008-07-25T19:28:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/1 "2008-07-25T19:28:37Z")
I was watching [How the West was Won](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056085/) on late night TV recently. For those who haven’t seen it, it was one of those “more stars than there are in the heavens” epics like _The Longest Day_ or _Greatest Story Ever Told_ in which actors who usually played leads or at least major supporting roles appeared in only slightly longer than cameo roles. One such actor was [Walter Brennan](http://images.google.com/images?q=WALTER%20brennan&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi), a man who most remembered for playing the cranky but sweet/simple but wise old man for the last couple of decades of his very long career (though he did make movies when young). He’s perhaps best known for the near fatally folksy sitcom [The Real McCoys](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_McCoys). (He was also one of the richest men in show business due to investments, but that’s not so relevant.) # He was only on screen in _How the West Was Won_ ([b/w pic](http://members.cox.net/icastones/HTWWW/pics/publicity/Reynolds_and_Brennan.JPG)) for about ten minutes, but he gave a great and very convincing turn as the patriarch of a clan of cold blooded murdering thieves who preyed upon people traveling on the river. He’s almost thoroughly evil: he’s trained his teenaged daughter to take men to “see the varmint” (basically leading them away for what they probably think is sex and then killing them for their valuables), giggles while he commits armed robbery, and clearly has no qualms about murdering whole families if need be. Great performance against type by someone not usually thought of as a great actor. (I seem to remember reading somewhere that he loved that role for exactly that reason.) # It’s no surprise to anybody that Robin Williams is a talented dramatic actor (I like his dramatic roles far better than his manic schtick) but I thought he was especially good as the predatory rapist and murderer in _Insomnia_. He held his own as a foil for Pacino. He was also good in a small role in _Dead Again_ as a psychiatrist who’d lost his license for ethical violations (sleeping with patients) and reduced to working in a grocery store, but still capable of valuable forensic insight (sort of a low-rent PG rated Hannibal Lecter). Who are some other actors usually associated with light or comic fare who’ve made great villains? PS- A few years ago there were rumors that Rowan Atkinson was going to play Voldemort (totally false it turned out, of course), but I was actually hoping they were true. I think he could probably give a great turn as a chilling psychopath (hell, it’s just Edmund Blackadder with fewer jokes). I think the words I’ve heard attributed to Edmund Kean, Edwin Booth, Donald Wolfit, and others probably are true: “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/2 "2008-07-25T19:32:31Z")
I came in here to point out Robin Williams. I think the reason he’s an effective villain, and that so many other comic actors are, is that there is often a hint of the unsettling about comedy. ---
**Author:** ![samarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4da419/32.png) [@samarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samarm)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/3 "2008-07-25T19:34:54Z")
Weird, I was also thinking of Robin Williams when I saw the thread title. I was going to suggest [One Hour Photo](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265459/) . ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/4 "2008-07-25T19:37:42Z")
I liked both Tom Cruise in Collateral and Kevin Costner in Mr. Brooks better than in almost any other role they performed in. ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/5 "2008-07-25T19:39:04Z")
Fred MacMurray. “My Three Sons,” Son of Flubber…_Double Indemnity_…okay, he was an ambivalent villain there, but a villain all the same. And a good one. I think he was a good villain in some other movie but my brain isn’t working today. And also: Andy Griffith. It may have been an MFT but he turned in a great performance as a villain who stranded a kid in the desert, and his first role (I think it was his first) he was kind of a bad guy, too. Folksy–but bad. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/6 "2008-07-25T19:39:56Z")
Paul Reiser in “Aliens.” ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/7 "2008-07-25T19:45:53Z")
[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze] And also: Andy Griffith. It may have been an MFT but he turned in a great performance as a villain who stranded a kid in the desert, and his first role (I think it was his first) he was kind of a bad guy, too. Folksy–but bad. [/QUOTE] Ah yes- Lonesome Rhodes in _A Face in the Crowd_- just saw it recently on TCM. He was a class A sleazebag in that. (I don’t think I’ve ever read a first-hand account of Griffith that had anything nice to say about him, so maybe this was less acting than Andy Taylor.) ---
**Author:** ![Windwalker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/5e9695/32.png) [@Windwalker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Windwalker)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/8 "2008-07-25T19:54:36Z")
Gerard McRaney in Deadwood, as George “Cocksucka” Hearst. He really injected a lot of bile underneath that thin civilized veneer. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/9 "2008-07-25T19:54:51Z")
**Ben Kingsley** seems to play softspoken good guys in films like _Gandhi, House of Sand & Fog, Schindler’s List, Searching for Bobby Fisher_ and even soft spoken bad guys like Cosmo in _Sneakers_. But he became a menacing loud mouth bad guy in _Sexy Beast_ unlike anything I’ve seen him do. ---
**Author:** ![gwendee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/35a633/32.png) [@gwendee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gwendee)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/10 "2008-07-25T20:21:29Z")
I’ve posted it before and am happy to do so again. **Michael Keaton** pegs the villain meter in **Pacific Heights**. His performance in \*\*Desperate Measures \*\* is also quite chilling, but since we’d alread seen him playing the personification of evil in Pacific Heights it wasn’t _as_ jarring. Pacific Heights to me was also just a much scarier movie. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/11 "2008-07-25T20:29:40Z")
[QUOTE=Hampshire] **Ben Kingsley** seems to play softspoken good guys in films like _Gandhi, House of Sand & Fog, Schindler’s List, Searching for Bobby Fisher_ and even soft spoken bad guys like Cosmo in _Sneakers_. But he became a menacing loud mouth bad guy in _Sexy Beast_ unlike anything I’ve seen him do. [/QUOTE] I’m tempted to claim that all of his good acting karma was destroyed when it came into contact with his performance in the film of “A Sound of Thunder”. Hell, it was destroyed when he agreed to even BE IN that film… ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/12 "2008-07-25T20:35:01Z")
[QUOTE=Sampiro] One such actor was [Walter Brennan](http://images.google.com/images?q=WALTER%20brennan&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi), a man who most remembered for playing the cranky but sweet/simple but wise old man for the last couple of decades of his very long career (though he did make movies when young). He’s perhaps best known for the near fatally folksy sitcom [The Real McCoys](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_McCoys). (He was also one of the richest men in show business due to investments, but that’s not so relevant.) He was only on screen in _How the West Was Won_ ([b/w pic](http://members.cox.net/icastones/HTWWW/pics/publicity/Reynolds_and_Brennan.JPG)) for about ten minutes, but he gave a great and very convincing turn as the patriarch of a clan of cold blooded murdering thieves who preyed upon people traveling on the river. He’s almost thoroughly evil: he’s trained his teenaged daughter to take men to “see the varmint” (basically leading them away for what they probably think is sex and then killing them for their valuables), giggles while he commits armed robbery, and clearly has no qualms about murdering whole families if need be. Great performance against type by someone not usually thought of as a great actor. (I seem to remember reading somewhere that he loved that role for exactly that reason.) [/quote] You’ve clearly never seen John Ford’s _My Darling Clementine_, then, because Brennan’s even better at being “worse” as the patriarch of the Clanton gang. There was often a strain of genuine menace in his “crazy old coot” routine, and one of his 3 Oscars was for the rather amoral Judge Roy Bean in _The Westerner_. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/13 "2008-07-25T20:41:38Z")
Good guy actor Henry Fonda was at his best in _Once Upon A Time in the West_. ---
**Author:** ![AlmondJoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@AlmondJoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlmondJoy)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/14 "2008-07-25T20:44:36Z")
Heath Ledger. I saw Dark Knight again last night and I was sooo caught up in the character. He completely made the movie for me ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/15 "2008-07-25T20:52:02Z")
[QUOTE=Hilarity N. Suze] Fred MacMurray. “My Three Sons,” Son of Flubber…_Double Indemnity_…okay, he was an ambivalent villain there, but a villain all the same. And a good one. I think he was a good villain in some other movie but my brain isn’t working today. And also: Andy Griffith. It may have been an MFT but he turned in a great performance as a villain who stranded a kid in the desert, and his first role (I think it was his first) he was kind of a bad guy, too. Folksy–but bad. [/QUOTE] Fred MacMurray in The Caine Mutiny. I spoilerize because it is an important dramatic reveal at the end of the film. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/16 "2008-07-25T20:53:51Z")
[QUOTE=DrFidelius] Fred MacMurray in The Caine Mutiny. I spoilerize because it is an important dramatic reveal at the end of the film. [/QUOTE] He was also a grade-A heel in _The Apartment_, too. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/17 "2008-07-25T20:59:35Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] He was also a grade-A heel in _The Apartment_, too. [/QUOTE] And _Double Indemnity_. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/18 "2008-07-25T21:10:36Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] You’ve clearly never seen John Ford’s _My Darling Clementine_, then, because Brennan’s even better at being “worse” as the patriarch of the Clanton gang. There was often a strain of genuine menace in his “crazy old coot” routine, and one of his 3 Oscars was for the rather amoral Judge Roy Bean in _The Westerner_. [/QUOTE] No I haven’t (to either of those). Makes me want to, though. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/19 "2008-07-25T21:31:11Z")
[QUOTE=ArchiveGuy] You’ve clearly never seen John Ford’s _My Darling Clementine_, then, because Brennan’s even better at being “worse” as the patriarch of the Clanton gang. There was often a strain of genuine menace in his “crazy old coot” routine, and one of his 3 Oscars was for the rather amoral Judge Roy Bean in _The Westerner_. [/QUOTE] Don’t forget _Rio Bravo_ and _Support Your Local Sheriff_. ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2008, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767/20 "2008-07-26T00:06:25Z")
The one that came to mind for me was Basil Rathbone. The bad guy in so many swashbucklers (probably most notably The Adventures of Robin Hood) because of his excellance as a fencer and yet is best known as Sherlock Holmes. There is of course comedian Mike Myers, after all he did play Dr. Evil. Don Rickles was much better known as a comedian, but in a number of roles he has played at least a sleeze and arguably a villain. Ed McMann, Johnny Carson’s sidekick played a bad guy in the original Fun With Dick and Jane (The one with Jane Fonda and George Segal). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comic-or-good-guy-actors-who-made-great-villains/457767.md?page=2)