Another Gene Hackman role – Little Bill in Unforgiven
For me, the quintessential movie bastard is George C. Scott as the title character in Patton
George C. Scott in The Hustler.
Here are a couple:
Walker (Lee Marvin) in Point Blank.
Chad (Aaron Eckhart) from In the Company of Men.
Bruce Dern in The Cowboys.
Jack Palance in Shane.
(“Go ahead…pick it up…”)
John Forsyth in And Justice for All.
How about the Duke brothers in Trading Places? Or Billy Zane’s character in Titanic?
I was going to say Aaron Eckhart’s character from <I>In the Company of Men</I>, but you beat me to it NDP.
A few more classic bastards…
<I>Beetlejuice</I>.
Bill Paxton’s sleazy car dealer from <I>True Lies</I>.
Hackman (at least his 20th mention in this thread) as the title character in <The Royal Tenenbaums</I>
Gubernatorial candidate/Klansman Homer Stokes from <O Brother, Where Art Thou?</I>
Bill Murray as Frances Xavier Cross in <I>Scrooged</I> before his change of heart, of course.
Brick Top from <Snatch>.
I was going to say Aaron Eckhart’s character from <I>In the Company of Men</I>, but you beat me to it NDP.
A few more classic bastards…
<I>Beetlejuice</I>.
Bill Paxton’s sleazy car dealer from <I>True Lies</I>.
Hackman (at least his 20th mention in this thread) as the title character in <The Royal Tenenbaums</I>
Gubernatorial candidate/Klansman Homer Stokes from <O Brother, Where Art Thou?</I>
Bill Murray as Frances Xavier Cross in <I>Scrooged</I> before his change of heart, of course.
Brick Top from <Snatch>.
Howsabout Paul Reiser as Carter Burke in Aliens?
Nice to see Charles Laughton (as Cap’n Bligh) on the list. How about Michael Caine (again) in Alfie ?
**The (Magnificent Rat) Bastards **
Miguel Ferrer from The Night Flier
Sir Richard Attenborough in Brighton Rock
Jason Patric in Your Friends And Neighbours
Maury Chaykin in The Adjuster
Richard Widmark in Kiss Of Death and Pickup on South Street
Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly
The Bitches
Barbra Stanwyck in Double Indemnity
Deborah Fiorentino in The Last Seduction
Cruella DeVille
Patricia McCormack from The Bad Seed
Pat Ast in Reform School Girls
In the real sense of “bastard” (illegitimate offspring) George Peppard was Robert Mitchum’s bastard son in “Home From The Hill” but the character was probably the most sympathetic one in the movie. Mitchum’s would probably be the “bastard” in the sense the thread is using the term.
But the only role I can think of where Mitchum was really a bastard was “Night Of The Hunter.” In everything else I can remember him in, Mitchum was just cool. Even in “Cape Fear” (although 95% of the rest of the movie-going public would probably rank that role among the bastards) Mitchum wasn’t a real bastard, just stressed.
I think the guard with no eyes in “Cool Hand Luke” was a pretty good bastard.
Robert Vaughan in “Bullitt.”
Robert Ryan in a great film “The Outfit” with Robert Duvall and Joe Don Baker.
Vittorio Gassman in “Sharky’s Machine.”
Robert Shaw in “The Sting.”
Ray Milland in “Dial M For Murder.”
Yul Brynner in “The Ten Commandments.”
Oh yeah. I forgot about this. Truly one of the nastiest characters i’ve seen in a movie.
I challenge anyone to come up with a bigger bastard than the character of Don Logan in the British movie Sexy Beast. I have never seen anyone so unpleasant on screen.
Even more astonishing is that the character’s played so amazingly believably by Ben Kingsley. All traces of Ghandi are gone. It’s a pretty good low-budget movie, but Kingsley utterly steals the show.
Preach it. This is another one i had forgotten about. Kingsley is amazing in that role.
I just saw Once upon a time in the West again yesterday, and I’d say Henry Fonda deserves to be somewhere on this list. Now there’s a bastard for ya.