Which actors have played more than one GREAT villain.

Cafe Society
1

A few actors come to mind that were great villains repeatedly.
Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber in Die Hard was the best part of the movie and he did this again as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991).
He is perfect as Snape in the HP movies. Before the movies were made, my wife and I decided the character was written with Mr. Rickman in mind.

Christopher Lee
He has probably played the villain in over 100 movies.
He was a good Dracula multiple times and great in all the campy Hammer films of the 60’s & 70’s.
He was an excellent Bond Villain as Francisco Scaramanga in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
He was good as Rochefort in my 2 favorite Musketeers movies.
He was the only good part of the classic bad mini series: Goliath Awaits (1981) He played the crazy Captain that kept everyone alive all those years but now won’t let go.
Recently he was great as Saruman in the LotR movies.
Star Wars fan tell me he a great or at least good as Count Dooku.

Vincent Price has got to be included for the complete body of work.

Boris Karloff Was great as The Monster in Frankenstein (1931) & Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
He was scary as The Mummy (1932)
He made an excellent comedic villain/foil in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) as Dr. Hollingshead & Dr. Henry Jekyll/Mr. Hyde in Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953).
I also give him bonus points as the Narrator/The Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966) (TV).

I think Bela was only great once.
Who am I missing?

2

Kathy Bates, if we may include sympathetic villains.

3

No list would be complete without Sydney Greenstreet . His very first role was as a murderer.

4

Gary Oldman has too many to remember, but a couple of favorites are in The *5th Element * and The Professional, with a decent job of being Dr. Smith.

5

Ben Kingsley was truly detestable and scary as a Brit mob thug in Sexy Beast.

And of course, there was his earlier turn at evil, which was unforgettably chilling.

:rolleyes:

6

He was also great as the vampire Count himself in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and a terrifying pimp in True Romance.

7

Robert De Niro? Pretty good bad guy in dozens of films.

8

Speaking of True Romance, Christopher Walken was only in one brief scene (with Dennis Hopper), but it is one of the most intense scenes in any movie ever. He is chillingly scary and evil there, and also strangely charismatic. You want to look away, but you don’t dare, in case you might miss something subtle. Walken also plays great villains in Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead, Suicide Kings (another sympathetic villain performance), and the criminally-underrated Nick of Time.

Arnold Vosloo is not a big-name actor, but he is very competent at playing villains: Imhotep in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Habib Marwan, the terrorist mastermind from the fourth season of 24, and the Scottish hunter/tracker from Hard Target, which I’ll defend to anyone as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s greatest movie ever and John Woo’s greatest movie that he made in America.

9

It was a shock seeing him look like himself in Batman Begins. :slight_smile:

10

Jack Nicholson was born to play villians.

11

I know of 1 great villian: Misery (1990) … Annie Wilkes
who was the other: In Dolores Claiborne I thought she was the hero?
I probably haven’t seen the one you’re refering to.

:smack: How could I miss Gary Oldman

12

David Warner
Jack the Ripper, in Time After Time
Evil, in Time Bandits
Ed Dillinger/Master Control Program, in Tron
and I think he was the villain’s butler or something in Titanic

Malcolm McDowell
Caligula, in Caligula
Alex, in A Clockwork Orange
Soran, in Star Trek: Generations
and he was also rather nasty in Blue Thunder and the Fantasy Island remake.

In a head-to-head matchup between the two, David Warner wins. When they were in a movie together, Warner played to bad guy.

13

I don’t believe Guttman ever killed anyone; he had his gunsel do it.

On that track, there’s Peter Lorre, with things like M, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The Maltese Falcon.

Edward G. Robinson was memorable in Little Caesar, Two Seconds, The Whole Town’s Talking (where he played a good guy, too), and Key Largo.

Humphrey Bogart was a fine villain in The Petrified Forest, Dead End, The Oklahoma Kid, The Roaring 20s, Angles with Dirty Faces and Brother Orchid.

James Cagney was memorable in The Public Enemy, Angels with Dirty Faces, and White Heat.

14

Don’t forget that David Warner also played SOCKS (Or however his name is spelled, the head red guy) in Tron.

Interestingly enough, both David Warner and Malcolm McDowell have played Admiral Sir Geoffery Tolwyn in various incarnations of the Wing Commander series, and both played the character excellently. That said, Tolwyn was only a villian when Malcolm McDowell played him.

Let’s also not forget John Lithgow who has played a number of entertainingly over-the-top villians in various action movies (and of course, he was Duke Farquad in the first Shrek movie). Anybody else notice a tendency for comedic actors to make good villians?

15

Sark.

Lithgow was great as Dr. Emilio Lizardo/John Whorfin in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, and he was one of the only things to redeem Cliffhanger.

16

You reminded me of another.

Yul Brynner
Rameses, in The Ten Commandments
The gunslinger, in Westworld

17

and the only thing to redeem Raising Cain

18

Twice.

*The Dark Eyes of London * a.k.a. The Human Monster
“You are blind, Lou, and you cannot speak. But you can hear…and that will never do!”

19

Max Von Sydow was fantastic hamming it up in both Flash Gordon and Strange Brew, (“I could crush your head. Like a nut.”), as a hitman that actually managed to be sympathetic in Three Days of the Condor, and more recently as the is-he-good-or-not head of Pre-Crime in Minority Report.

Ronny Cox was great in both Robocop and Total Recall.

Stephen Berkoff was memorable as General Orlov in Octopussy and Victor Maitland in Beverly Hills Cop.

Vernon Wells was great in three totally over-the-top performances as the bad guy from Commando, the crazy biker chief in Weird Science, and (my favorite) the crazy mohawk guy from Road Warrior. “You! You can run! But you can’t hide!!”

Clancy Brown: Kurgan in Highlander, the murdered in Shoot To Kill, Capt. Hadley in Shawshank Redemption

And he was also fantastic as the Bond villain Max Zorin in A View To A Kill.

20

He also played the villain in Needful Things, a forgettable movie based on a Stephen King movie about a small town shop owner who could sell people the very thing they always wanted, for a high price. He totally stole the movie.

He played a good guy in Buckaroo Banzai, but that is out of character for him. He is also great as the voice of Lex Luthor in the Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League cartoons.