Another Top 10 Actors Who Always Play Villains

There are few actors out there who can pull of a dastardly, devious and oh-so-campy villain performance like the star of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” “Legend,” and the original TV miniseries version of Stephen King’s “It.” With a knack for over-the-top but still engrossing performances dripping with manic menace, this English actor has had villainous turns across the big and small screens, in live action and voice-over roles. He’s menaced the internet as Kilokhan in “Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad” and been a toxic blight in “FernGully: The Last Rainforest”, and we’ve had as much fun watching him in each role as he clearly did playing them.

And speaking of actors with a particular enthusiasm for diving head-first into campy villain fun, this “Harry Potter” alumnus is remembered not just for her frequent collaborations with ex-husband Tim Burton, but for a long and storied career filled with villainous turns. Whether she’s playing the dastardly Bellatrix Lestrange in “Harry Potter,” going after Alice’s head as the Red Queen in “Alice in Wonderland” or turning people into pies in “Sweeney Todd,” this actress approaches every villain role she’s offered with gusto. While the actress has joked that her recent villainous roles are thanks to her age, we think that it comes down to a pure talent for being delightfully bad.

Many audience members first met this Irish actor when he appeared as The Scarecrow in the first film in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy. With piercing eyes, cheekbones that could cut glass and a subtle Irish brogue, there aren’t many actors who can imbue a role with as much sinister energy as he has. Which isn’t to say that he can’t also go completely off the deep end when the role calls for it. It’s that ability to go from icy cool to short-fused and violent at the drop of a hat that makes this actor one we’ll always love to see playing big-screen baddies.

Who else but Doctor Hannibal Lecter could take this spot on our list? Since his groundbreaking appearance in “Silence of the Lambs”, this English thespian has carved out a sizeable niche playing cool, unflappable but effortlessly sinister villains across film and television. He’s returned to the role that made him famous multiple times, but the award-winning actor is hardly coasting on past victories. Just recently, we’ve been delighted to watch his turn as Dr. Robert Ford, the director of the futuristic theme park that serves as the setting of HBO’s “Westworld”. Much like the show itself, he’s full of sinister secrets and shocking turns, a perfect fit for the legendary actor.

Another “Harry Potter” alum who’s just oh-so-good at being oh-so-bad, this British actor is far more than just the guy underneath Lucius Malfoy’s silvery locks. He’s played baddies of every sort, from Captain Hook in the 2003 “Peter Pan” movie, to Lex Luthor himself in the animated movie “Justice League: Gods and Monsters”. Just recently he even had one of his best turns yet in Gore Verbinski’s “A Cure for Wellness”. In the film, the actor once again demonstrates his villainous chops as the head of a seemingly benevolent but very sinister medical center. If he was our doctor, we might just stick to bedrest and chicken soup.

For many, this English actor’s careers playing villains began with his turn in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of “A Clockwork Orange”, but it goes back a bit further. Before making cinema history, and forever ruining “Singing in the Rain” for us, the actor appeared in a similarly sinister role in Lindsay Anderson’s “If…” as a charismatic public school student who incites a full-on student uprising. Since then he’s played villains in a number of movies, including “Tank Girl” and “Star Trek: Generations”. If we had to pick a favorite of his recent work, we’d definitely pick his turn as the head of the villainous Enclave in “Fallout 3”.

There aren’t many actors who could appear as a human-looking and shoeless Satan and completely pull it off, but this Swedish-born actor is one of them. Oozing a threatening and slightly sleazy energy, the “Fargo” and “8mm” star has made a living playing criminals and unsavory characters in TV and film. He’s menaced The Dude with a pair of scissors in “The Big Lebowski” and more recently stared down a very unhappy John Wick in “John Wick Chapter 2”. But we can’t help but keep coming back to his brief but memorable scene as Lucifer himself, also opposite Keanu Reeves, in 2005’s “Constantine”. The Prince of Darkness has never been this creepy!

Ever since exploding onto the scene as the monstrous Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds”, this actor has taken over the villain business. Since his breakout role, he’s played baddies opposite screen icons like James Bond, played real-life monsters like Léon Rom in “The Legend of Tarzan” and portrayed literary villains like Cardinal Richelieu in “The Three Musketeers”. If his role in Tarantino’s blood-stained war movie proved anything, it’s that the Austrian actor has the kind of sinister charm that makes for an amazing onscreen villain, and he’s gone on to prove that time and time again in subsequent roles.

It takes a lot of qualities to play a good villain, and this star has all of them. Despite his first role as a somewhat hapless gangster in Nicolas Winding-Refn’s “Pusher”, this Danish actor became a villainous force to be reckoned with in the wake of his appearance as Le Chiffre in “Casino Royale”. Thanks to his intense bearing, velvety-smooth voice and top-notch acting skills, he’s landed villain roles like Kaecilius in “Doctor Strange”. And did you know he even voiced the chameleonic Randall in the Danish dub of “Monsters, Inc.”? And obviously we can’t overlook his performance as Hannibal Lecter on NBC’s “Hannibal”. Who honestly could?

Of course this actor is great at playing antagonists, it’s right there in his name. Dafoe, The Foe? He’s worked with directors including Sam Raimi, Wes Anderson and others, and they’ve all come to the same conclusion: that the Wisconsin native makes for a terrific villain. Another actor with a penchant for going all-out, he’s contorted his face into enough manic, sadistic grins that it’s surprising he hasn’t played The Joker by now. But while his villains may frequently be over-the-top, there’s always just enough lurking below the surface to make them memorable and sometimes even sympathetic, in addition to flat-out fun.