Which current/recent actor do you think has played the most memorable assortment of villains over the years?

I would have to go with Kevin Spacey:

The Usual Suspects
Swimming With Sharks
Seven

(not to mention House of Cards, though that's a series)

Any other contenders for the best villainous actor?

^ Sure they're older flicks, but spoilers galore.

Gary Oldman:
Dracula
Fifth Element
Leon the Professional
Air Force One

Perhaps not a classic villain per se... his work in Goodfellas, Casino and JFK put him in pretty rarefied air.

Mel Gibson in What Women Want

William Zabka...most recently in How I Met Your Mother...




...and /thread.

Alan Rickman

He should have won an Oscar for making Prince Of Thieves watchable.

Another vote for Rickman.

James Hong

Let's be honest.

Alan Rickman elevated DIE HARD from being a B-movie to an action movie classic.

Dennis Hopper : Blue Velvet / Red Rock West / Speed
Jack Nicholson : The Shining / Batman / The Departed / A Few Good Men
Ralph Fiennes : Schindler’s List / Harry Potter / Red Dragon / In Bruges
Willem Dafoe : Wild at Heart / Spider Man / To Live And Die In L.A. / Streets of Fire and a bunch of others
Robert Mitchum : Cape Fear / Night of the Hunter

Not sure how William Zabka is a villian when Machio is the one who stole his girl and just had to steal the Karate trophy he had been training his whole life for using some gimmicky crane kick stuff that was probably against the rules.

I'm in the minority on this, but he was pretty out there for Speed 2 a guilty pleasure of mine.

The dude playing the Charles Manson-type leader in Devil's Rejects is the most grotesque and hateful person I have ever seen in a movie. Johnny Depp, Robert DeNiro and Gary Oldman combined have never created a character so large and convincing. I'm still in awe of that performance.

EDIT: Bill Moseley who was also in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 playing a totally different and unique character. This guys some actor.

Mark Strong

"John, I'm not going to shoot you between the eyes, I'm gonna shoot you between the balls!"


Alan Rickman should be knighted for that role. Just watching him get frustrated at everything was worth sitting through the rest of the movie. I still don't know who played a funnier Sheriff, Alan Rickman or Roger Rees.

Was Keysor Soze real though? I think he was just a made up story.

No one comes close to Richard Widmark in my eyes.

And he wasn't even a certified brown belt, which was the minimum required for the All-Valley Tournament.

My first thought (for recent actors) was Rickman.

In addition to Die Hard, he played essentially the same sneering villain in Robin Hood: POT (or POS, depending upon your opinion), Quigley Down Under, and one might argue that these roles led to his choice as Snape in the Harry Potter franchise. I was afraid he'd be forever typecast, but he seems to have been able to transcend his nastier image.

A second choice is Tim Roth. Planet of the Apes, Rob Roy, and a bunch of other roles (heck, even as the protagonist of "Lie To Me" on tv was a pretty unlikeable character, and he reprised his smarmy, twisted villain in tv's recent miniseries "Klondike". Roth's face seems frozen in a perpetual sneer.

Going back a bit farther, some other guys who make a chunk of change playing villains included William Smith and Donald Pleasance.

Oldman is my first pick, but Rickman would be a solid #2.

Yep, first name that popped in my head.