Reaching back in time, it has struck me before that I can’t recall a single sympathetic role played by Adolphe Menjou. His roles varied from the completely villainous (Paths of Glory) to the suave but nasty lothario (Stage Door) to the silly and completely unreasonable (You Were Never Lovelier) to the slick and slimy (Roxie Hart) to the neo-Fascist (State of the Union). Perhaps in his younger days he played leading types, I’ve never seen any of those movies.
And a case where art imitates life, because apparently we was a thoroughly nasty man who sang like a bird against his fellow actors and others in the movie industry to the HUAC during the red scare in the early 50’s. I don’t think he was a very good actor either, all facade and pretty clothes.
Well, they’ve played bad guys, but I was responding to Alpha Twit’s post, as quoted in my post. My point is that a good actor doesn’t necessarily have to be a scumbag to portray a scumbag. The specific wording is “a constant stream of selfish and destructive choices behind him,” and that made me think of several characters portrayed by the actors mentioned: Newman in The Color of Money and Nobody’s Fool, Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy and Pacino in… can’t remember now. Not bad guys, just fuck ups, usually on the road to redemption.
And look at his character in The Player: definitely the antagonist, but the protagonist was a murdering Hollywood scumbag, so… He is a wonderful villain, though!
For evil women: Rose McGowan, Sharon Stone and Shannen Doherty played a lot of gals you would not take home to Mama. I guess Sharon Stone was kind of heroic in Sliver, Diabolique and that western she made, but those were outliers. She has awesome “crazy eyes”!
There you go. I think there are a few more. Besides Cool Hand Luke. I think he liked those kinds of roles.
And if we’re just going to toss out stellar bad-guy performances, how about Ed Harris in A History of Violence? Some kind of reptilian quality. “Joe-wee” (brrr). Reminded me of a Komodo dragon.
I can only contribute a question:
Does Ray Liotta play mostly bad guys, or is that only my perception? Good looking, charming, and engaging- Ray still tends to play double crossing sleazebags in my experience. My experience is pretty limited however, so my question stands- does Mr. Liotta have a high proportion of bad guy roles (or am I basing this on defaulting to GOODFELLAS whenever I think of him)? I have seen him do TV roles where he plays himself and sort of pokes fun at his persona.
Also, if Paul Newman is going to be a bad guy – Liotta is out of the running for only attractive and charming villain even if he is eventually determined to be one himself.
I don’t know if Henry Hill could really be called a “bad guy role.” He’s a bad guy, but he’s not a Bad Guy. Obviously the perception of him is skewed in his favor because he’s the narrator, but he’s not a malevolent presence the same way that Tommy (Joe Pesci) and to a lesser extent, Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) are.
When I think of Ray Liotta I think of the insane evil cop in Unlawful Entry. That was one of the most evil bad guys on film. Ray was fuckin scary in that.
Indeed. I love those kinda scenes where some gnarly old type who intially comes across as disarming or duffer-quaint ends up handing someone’s ass to them on a plate.
In the inconceivably execrable Nightwing, about bats gone crazy, he plays a bat specialist who helps hunt them down.
Definitely not in Silent Running. But, as another poster said - mostly crazy (just like the flop Middle Age Crazy he was in with Ann Margaret).
For the greatest bad guy ratio, I give you the time-honoured Henry Silva.
One hundred and one per cent baaaaaaad.