What actors best known for comic/heroic/sympathetic roles would make good villains?

She already played a scheming little weasel on Deadwood. Her little plot was actually more than a little disturbing and cemented my fascination with that show.

Shakespeare aside, he actually doesn’t seem to have been a particularly nice man. More a cold, ambitious climber who seized every opportunity he got. Quite competent and capable, but unpleasant. And I lean to the opinion ( following at least one of his biographers ) that he was much more likely than not responsible for his nephews disposal.

Arnold Schwarzenneger will be looking for some film roles after his term as Governor expires . . . and I haven’t seen him play a bad guy since Terminator. I bet he could do a great Neo-Nazi or something.

Henry Fonda was the epitome of evil in Once Upon a Time in the West. I can’t think of another villain role he’s done and Leone casted him specifically because he was always a good guy.

Don Knotts was - if not really a villain, quite menacing in Pleasantville. It was quite a difference from the “incompetent, yet essentially good-hearted doofus” roles for which he’s most familiar. (Mr. Furley, Barney Fife)

Steve Martin was pretty bad-ass in The Spanish Prisoner.

I caught part of an old movie featuring Andy Griffith as a villain. I thought he did a good job, but Aunt Bea woulda taken a switch to him if she’d known.

Donny Osmond would make a swell sniper or spree killer. He’d take his shot, from the Texas Tower or wherever, and then (with an impenetrable smile) chug down a cold glass of milk.

How odd, last week we watched both conan movies on cable, and mrAru and I though that he would be good in one of the Conan as the Old King stories. I know he is woefully out of shape now, but I would be willing to bet he could get back into reasonable shape for an ‘old king’ type role fairly fast. All he needs is to tighten up, not really bulk out like he was competeing again.

He was amazing in that part, that level stare with those blue eyes is chilling.

Patrick Stewart would make for an excellent Bond villain.

Make it so.

Has Ian McKellan ever played a really good villain in a non comic book role? Something about him makes me think he could… I’d love to see him in an Adelai Niska kind of role, that sweet grandfatherly type who’s just pure evil underneath.

I remember Leslie Nilsen was great in Creepshow, though I don’t know if he ever played a bad guy before that.

Has Mr. Monk ever done a villian? Or Simon Pegg could do crazy very easily, I think. He’s got intense eyes.

I’d like to see a perky ingenue – Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, Kate Hudson, Reese Witherspoon – make a go at playing a hellbitch femme fatale.

Not sure about before, but he was a credible bad guy in Nuts.

He already played a villain - Macro in I, Claudius. He was the head of the Praetorian Guard under Tiberius, let Caligula do his wife and purportedly helped Caligula murder Tiberius. Not a nice person.

He was also a bad guy in *Conspiracy Theory*.

Skald the Rhymer I’ve never seen Scrubs. In fact I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything other than The Good Wife.

George Clooney would be good in a Stepfather like role - a character who everyone thinks is a great guy but who is secretly a serial killer.

Patrick Stewart’s character on American Dad may not officially be a villain but he certainly is in the nieghbourhood.

Not to mention Little Shop of Horrors.

Was it A Face in the Crowd? Great movie that continues to be relevant today.

Or it could have been Savages, a not so great movie but it had the advantage of being right on the heels of a long run of Griffith as the amiable, good hearted hick with country smarts (notably Sheriff Andy Taylor, but reaching back to Private Stockdale in No Time for Sergeants).