You often hear (or at least, I do) whenever an actor plays a role that is “new” to him or her, someone will say, “It was weird to see (such-and-such) as a villian.” Sometimes they do a good job, sometimes they don’t. Who would you like to see as a bad guy, or who were you surprised to see as an effective one?
I’d personally love to see Morgan Freeman as a evil guy, just for that voice.
They already made it but I haven’t had a chance to see it yet:
One Hour Photo.
I would only be interested in seeing a Robin Williams movie if he were playing a villian as I consider him inherently evil.
(I mean, shouldn’t Robin Williams as your nanny or you doctor really be the basis of a horror movie rather than a comedy?)
Tom Hanks. In * Road to Perdition * he played someone who did some bad guy stuff as part of his job, but he was still the good guy in the film. I think he is a great actor and he certainly gets a lot of acclaim, but he does pretty much reprise the same character over and over. I’d like to see him play some one who is evil because he wants to be, not just forced into it by circumstances.
I was certainly surprised to see how effectively creepy Robin Williams was in * Insomnia *, and I saw a preview for a film coming out where he plays a stalker where he looks to play an even more warped character.
In preview I see betenoir beat me to it. * One Hour Photo * is the film I was thinking of.
Patrick Stewart. No, A Christmas Carol doesn’t count. Scrooge redeems himself at the end.
He plays the bad guy who takes over a school in a movie that I think is titled Masterminds. A word of warning, you have to REALLY want to see him as a bad guy to subject yourself to this film.
I think theyt made a huge mistake by not casting Paul Reubens as Dr. Smith in the Lost in Space movie . . .
Well, Henry Fonda was a wonderful bad guy in “Once Upon a Time in the West,” and I’d love to have seen his old friend Jimmy Stewart try playing a similarly evil role. To the best of my knowledge, he never did play an out and out bad guy.
I can think of a few actors I never thought highly of, guys I thought had no talent at all, who surprised me by turning in very good performances as villains… so good that I actually overcame my prejudices and learned to like them in other roles. Specifically, I’d never liked RIchard Gere before seeing “Internal Affairs,” and I never thought Rob Lowe could act before seeing “Bad Influence.”
I once saw a movie with Randy Quaid in it who played a bad cop. I can’t remember what the title was, but I remember being shocked that he could play a bad guy since I’m used to seeing him in National Lampoon movies.
Hmmmm. Have we seen an evil Mel Gibson yet? Maybe they could cast him as a young Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars: Episode III…
…ok, he looks nothing like Peter Cushing, but one can hope.
Wasn’t Morgan Freeman a bad guy in Nurse Betty?
JuanitaTech
P.S. The OP may want to request a mod to add ‘spoilers’ to his title.
Morgan Freeman was a bad guy already
Spoiler if you haven’t seen Conspiracy Theory:
Patrick Stewart plays the bad guy.
Also, Morgan Freeman is quasi-evil in Chain Reaction
Mel Gibson has kind of played a bad guy. Go see “Payback”. I guess I should say that he’s a bad guy in the film but he’s not the villian. Kris Kristofferson is and he’s tremendous. Great movie.
Has Tom Cruise ever been a bad guy? Other than in Taps, when he was more insane than bad? He’d make a good bad guy for me, simply b/c I would enjoy watching him get killed.
Speaking of enjoying watching him get killed, I always thought Executive Decision was way underrated.
I think Harrison Ford would make a good bad guy too. (Bob Falfa wasn’t bad, just kinda wild).
Generally, I think larger than life actors can play bad guys really well, that’s why Anthony Hopkins did so well in Silence of the Lambs and Charlton Heston did so well in The Three Musketeers and Orson Wells in The Third Man and in the movie where Heston played a Mexican cop.
But using logic like that, Sean Connery should make a great bad guy, but look at how terrible The Avengers turned out, but giving him his due, it wasn’t all his fault.
While this runs counter to the theory put forth above, I bet that Sam Waterson would be a great villian.
People keep listing movies where Morgan Freeman is “bad” but still largely sympathetic. But in Street Smart (quite possibly his best performance and the first one he got an Oscar nomination for), he devours the screen in being incredibly, unapologetically the villain.
That was Welles in Touch of Evil. He also wasn’t much of a good guy in The Stranger, A Man for All Seasons and Catch-22.
Tom Cruise was most (intentionally) unsympathetic in Magnolia, I think.
It is probably too late now, but has Andy Griffith ever played the bad guy? It be sort of creepy to see good ol’ Sheriff Taylor/Ben Matlock as an evil doer.
I thought Cruise’s character in Magnolia was pretty evil. Made me want to twist his head off anyway. 
Know who I think would be cool to see as a bad guy?
Bob Newhart.
Or Jennifer Aniston.
Harrison Ford was a murderer in a movie of his made in the last five years, but as I do not know how to do that kooky spolier thing, I can’t say…
I’ll test it out:
TEST
Ok. That worked…
Harrison Ford Spoiler!
Harrison was the bad guy in that crappy movie What Lies Beneath…a pile of crap