Top 10 Best Movie Villains of All Time

Anton Chigurh is brought to life by Javier Bardem’s outstandingly frightening performance in the film adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name.

The villain Anton Chigurh is truly death personified with his dead eyes filled with contempt for the human race— a truly menacing villain.

He terrorizes in this part neo-noir thriller, a part neo-Western film directed by the Coen brothers about a cat and mouse chase between a Vietnam veteran and a Texas welder set in the 1980s Texas desert landscape.

Also known as ‘Big Nurse’, Nurse Ratched serves as the primary antagonist in the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975).

She definitely deserves a spot on this list of the best movie villains of all time for making life hard for the patients of the mental institution she works in. Louis Fletcher’s performance as Nurse Ratched even earned her a well-deserved Academy Award for Best Actress.

The character is responsible for lobotomizing the film’s protagonist Randle, played by Jack Nicholson. Her portrayal of the character is so good it became a stereotype for the aggressive non-nurturing nurse ever since.

Acting as both protagonist and antagonist in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ novel, Alex DeLarge is a sociopathic teen whose main pastime is assaulting and stealing from people for his own enjoyment.

He operates and leads a gang of other like-minded teens who break into people’s houses and tortures them. Although his cruelty is his most defining trait, the character is also known for his love of Beethoven’s music and drinking milk.

He is portrayed in the film by actor Malcolm McDowell, who did such a great job that Kubrick considers his not winning as Best Actor at the Oscars a major snub.

In The Godfather Part I, we see a reluctant Michael Corleone assume the position his father left as the titular godfather of the Corleone crime family.

In Part II, he sheds all his reluctance to become a hero turned villain. One of his most horrendous acts is the ordering of the killing of his own brother who betrayed him by offering information to his opponents.

The character is played by veteran actor Al Pacino who was nominated twice as Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his role

Admit it, The Dark Knight (2008)’s excellence was in part due to the late Heath Ledger’s career-defining performance as the psychopath, mass-murdering clown, The Joker.

For his role, Ledger famously won a posthumous award as Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards as well as other accolades from international award-giving bodies. Too bad he wasn’t alive to see and reap the fruit of his labors.

Amon Goeth definitely deserves a spot on our top 10 list. He’s not just a fictional villain. His heinous crimes actually happened in real life which resulted in him being hanged for the torture and extermination of innocent people.

He is played in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993) by Ralph Fiennes who won a BAFTA Award for his performance.

In the film, we see his horrible acts come to life to be embedded in our memories as a warning to the evil that humans are capable of committing.

HAL 9000 stands out as a villain on our list of top 10 Villains of all time because he (it) isn’t human. Voiced by Douglas Rain, HAL 9000 is a programmed computer with human-like qualities.

In the film, we see HAL as a red television camera eye which appears on the crew’s equipment. The AI is capable of things like facial recognition, speech and recognizing human emotional behaviors. Sounds great, right? Well, think again.

HAL serves as the main antagonist in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1967).

Perhaps one of the most famous villains on our list is Star Wars’, Darth Vader.

The character is created by George Lucas himself and has been portrayed by many actors over the years in his different appearances throughout the original trilogy and the prequels.

Darth Vader, born as Anakin Skywalker, also holds the distinction of being one of the best movie villains of all time by both fans and critics. He was originally born as a Jedi but unfortunately came to the dark side when he served the Sith master, Palpatine.

Norman Bates’ character was inspired by the real-life murderer, Ed Gein. The character serves as both protagonist and anti-hero of Alfred Hitchcock’s most famous work, Psycho (1960).

Emotionally abused by his mother throughout his life, he has developed a hatred for the female sex believing that all women mean to cause him harm. His mental anguish leads him to develop a bad case of dissociative identity disorder which leads him to assume his dead mother’s own identity wearing her colds and imitating her voice. It is in this persona that he commits his murders at the Bates’ Motel.

We go from one psycho to another.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in the films, serves as the main antagonist Red Dragon book series and its corresponding film adaptations.

Dr. Lecter is a forensic psychiatrist who is also a serial killer and cannibal. In Silence of the Lambs (1991), we see him incarcerated but still managing to control the people around him thanks to his background in psychiatry and inherent psychopathy.