The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time

PREMIERE celebrates the most memorable movie characters and talks to some of the actors who brought them to life.

There are plenty of things we go to the movies for: spectacle, an escape from our workaday lives, a portal into a different world, a laugh, an artistic epiphany. And then there are the people. Not the people we go to the movies with, or the people in the theater for that matter. (Hey, you in the next row—knock it off with the cell phone.) The people in the movies, conjured by an actor speaking a writer’s words, guided by a director, locked onto celluloid by a cinematographer, projected onto the screen by a beam of light. So many degrees of contrivance—but sometimes we believe in these people as much as we believe in . . . well, actually, more than we believe in that joker who’s still on her cell. For this list, we’ve shunned biopics, which begin with a filmmaker’s mission to do justice to reality. Here we’re giving priority to people who never were—but who are always with us movie lovers.

100. Roger “Verbal” Kint
Played by Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects (1995, dir. Bryan Singer)

He doesn’t look like much—a balding, palsied, sad-sack thief with a limp. But one thing Verbal can do is talk, and after surviving a botched drug deal and ensuing boat fire that’s left a slew of men dead, talk he does—to Special Agent Kujan (Chazz Palminteri), a cool cat who figures he has this mouse cornered. Verbal’s tale is fantastical, involving frame-ups, corrupt cops, a lawyer named Kobayashi, and an archvillain named Keyser Soze. His story’s so good, in fact, that it lands him back on the street, easy prey for the evil forces manipulating him. Until he undergoes one of cinema’s most unexpected transformations and disappears right before our eyes.

Defining Moment: Sitting alone in an office, awaiting interrogation, Verbal, seemingly bored, scans a bulletin board. You never know when you’re going to need a few details. (MGM DVD)

99. Kevin McCallister
Played by Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone (1990, dir. Chris Columbus) and one later film

“He’s only a kid, Harry—we can take him.” So says burglar Marv (Daniel Stern) to his partner in crime (Joe Pesci) as they prepare to raid a home whose sole inhabitant is an eight-year-old boy who was accidentally left behind when his family went away for Christmas. As Bugs Bunny might put it, they don’t know him vewy well. “This is my house. I have to defend it,” Kevin vows, devising ingenious booby traps that send the crooks tumbling. But it’s not just the cartoonish slapstick that made Alone one of the most successful comedies of all time: It’s the sweet heart and courageous tenacity of the kid himself.

Defining Moment: Standing in front of the mirror, Kevin proceeds to make pop culture history when he slaps aftershave on his cheeks, letting out a startled, piercing “Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” (Fox DVD)

98. Antoine Doinel
Played by Jean-Pierre Léaud in The 400 Blows (1959, dir. François Truffaut) and four later films

He steals, he plagiarizes, he’s lazy . . . and yet Antoine is cinema’s most sympathetic bad boy. Sure, Léaud’s winsome face helps, but what really sells the kid is Truffaut’s complex conception and flawless execution—the movie shows us that Antoine’s transgressions are the flailings of a not-yet-lost soul looking for love and understanding. Four more films—including the immortal Stolen Kisses—would show us where Antoine went from Blows’ indelible final freeze-frame.

Defining Moment: As priceless as the final shot is Antoine’s reaction when the reform-school shrink asks him if he’s ever slept with a girl. (Criterion DVD)

97. Ace Ventura
Played by Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994, dir. Tom Shadyac) and one later film

If, as a boy, Jim Carrey were to boast that one day he’d be a world-famous movie star, people might’ve said he was talking out of his ass. Well . . . witness Ace Ventura, the pet detective partial to animals (“I don’t do humans,” he says, rather disturbingly, at one point), crime fighting, and speaking out of his tush. While tracking down the kidnapped Miami Dolphins mascot (a dolphin named Snowflake) and Dan Marino, Ventura is unimpeachably gut-splitting with his ridiculous hair, his Matlock-on-crack sleuthing skills, and his cringe-inducing catchphrase “All ... righty then!”

Defining Moment: Lying to his landlord, Ace insists that he has no pets in his apartment. As soon as the landlord is gone, Ace calls his animals, and all manner of chirping, squawking creatures run and fly to him as he stands proud, a most twisted Noah. (Warner DVD)

96. Tommy DeVito
Played by Joe Pesci in GoodFellas (1990, dir. Martin Scorsese)

Calling this two-bit hood volatile is like saying Siberia is a little on the chilly side. A walking fireplug of seemingly inexplicable sadism and constantly wounded pride—you get the feeling he always wants to be insulted, just so he has an excuse to blow the insulter’s head off—he is perhaps the single most irredeemable character ever put on film.

Defining Moment: The “How am I funny?” stuff is, of course, classic, but the one-sided showdown with Spider at the card game really demonstrates Tommy’s heart of darkness. (Warner DVD)

95. Oda Mae Brown
Played by Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost (1990, dir. Jerry Zucker)

Goldberg’s faux psychic–turned–authentic channeler brings an infusion of welcome comic electricity to this heavy story—a murder mystery on top of a definitive chick flick. With a combination of vibrancy and sass, Oda Mae steals scene after scene, alternately spooked by her sudden gift and infuriated with her newfound constant companion, Sam (Patrick Swayze). For imploring the Almighty (“I’ll stop cheating, I’ll do penance, just make that guy go away!”) and being possessed by a roomful of the deceased, Goldberg walked away with an Oscar and elevated a by-the-numbers love story to something funny and touching and memorable.

Defining Moment: She’s noblest when begrudgingly letting Sam use her body to touch Molly (Demi Moore) one last time, but nobility doesn’t suit Oda Mae. Her best moment comes as she barrels down Wall Street with a check for $4 million in her hand—until Sam forces her to donate it to charity. “Hand her the check,” he prods, prompting Oda Mae’s explosively hilarious, tight-lipped growl, “I will!” (Paramount DVD)

94. Rose Sayer
Played by Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen (1951, dir. John Huston)

It is 1914 and repressed spinster Rose Sayer has spent the last decade as a Christian missionary in the Congo. After the German army burns down her village, Rose escapes on a rickety steamboat helmed by the rough-hewn Charlie Allnutt (Humphrey Bogart), and together they try to blow up a German warship. The unlikely duo fall in love, and Rose is transformed from what Charlie drunkenly refers to as a “psalm-singing, skinny old maid” into a feisty and passionate cocaptain.

Defining Moment: During an early rough spot on the river, Rose pulls at her pompadour, her eyes glittering with excitement: She has found emotional liberation. This transformation isn’t wasted on Charlie. “I'll never forget the way you looked going over the falls,” he says later. “Head up, chin out, hair blowing in the wind . . . the living picture of a heroine.” (Fox VHS)

93. Harry Lime
Played by Orson Welles in The Third Man (1949, dir. Carol Reed)

Complimented on dominating a film in which he appears for less than 20 minutes total, Welles, with uncharacteristic modesty, told Peter Bogdanovich, “That’s the part, you know. Every sentence in the whole script is about Harry Lime—nobody talks about anything else for ten reels. And then there’s that shot in the doorway—what a star entrance that was!” The thing is, Welles had to maintain supercriminal Lime’s mystique after that entrance. A diabolical wheeler-dealer in the moral limbo of postwar Vienna, the supposed-to-be-dead Lime is a character of volatile complexity, claiming to believe in God one minute and referring to his fellow humans as ants the next. Even desperately rushing through the city’s sewers at the end of the film, he leaves some sinister power in his wake.

Defining Moment: The “cuckoo clock” speech, historical inaccuracies be damned. (Criterion DVD)

92. Dil
Played by Jaye Davidson in The Crying Game (1992, dir. Neil Jordan)

Forty minutes in, she makes her first appearance, and what had been a tale about a terrorist kidnapping becomes one of the oddest and most poignant love stories ever filmed. Dil, the
cross-dressing hairdresser (played by newcomer Davidson), is so seductive and—behind her bluff, tough exterior—so tenderhearted that once he knows the score, Fergus/Jimmy (Stephen Rea) still can’t let her go. “Even when you were throwing up,” Dil observes astutely, “I could tell you cared.” Marketed as the movie with a secret, The Crying Game harbors an even more subversive truth: that, ultimately, the gender-bending makes no difference. Or, as Dil would say, “Details, baby, details.”

Defining Moment: The big reveal, in which both lovers are equally shocked by their cluelessness. (Artisan DVD)

91. Mrs. Iselin
Played by Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate (1962, dir. John Frankenheimer)

The manipulative, domineering Mrs. Iselin—whom Lansbury likens to a “female Lear”—is perhaps the mother of all bad mothers. The powerful wife of a dim U.S. senator, she’s a mass of contradictions—a red-baiting Communist who helps turn her son (Laurence Harvey) into a robotic killing machine but who also seems to harbor an incestuous love for him. “When I see it today I’m sort of astounded, because I think, ‘My God, you had a lot of sass and gall to play it that way,’ ” says Lansbury. “I certainly wasn’t old enough to have enough life experience.” In fact, Lansbury was only three years older than Harvey (“We had a laugh about that,” she says). She isn’t quite sure how she captured the character’s supremely selfish malevolence: “I think it’s because I’m so fearful of evil and nastiness. I know how to play it because I’ve watched it carefully.”

Defining Moment: The pivotal scene that ends with a more-than-motherly kiss on the lips, “so shocking that John [Frankenheimer] said, ‘Put your hand up’ ” to partially block the audience’s view and get it past the censors. It’ll take more than that to shock viewers of the upcoming Jonathan Demme–directed remake, set against the
Gulf War with Meryl Streep as Mom. (MGM DVD)

90. John Malkovich
Played by John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich (1999, dir. Spike Jonze)

In writer Charlie Kaufman’s cinematic head trip, Malkovich gets the surreal opportunity to play himself (as a pretentious, horny fop) and himself as possessed by a number of other characters, most memorably John Cusack’s envious puppeteer. Thus, we find the heretofore dignified actor dancing, shirtless and sweaty, as a human marionette; consorting with Charlie Sheen; encountering a roomful of John Malkoviches; and suffering a chase through his unconscious. It’s a one-of-a-kind role, and Malkovich nails it.

Defining Moment: On the shoulder of the New Jersey Turnpike, he confronts his cerebral invaders, lamely yelling, “It’s my heeeead!” A passing trucker hurls a can at him, taunting, “Hey, Malkovich! Think fast.” (Universal DVD)

89. Sandy Olsson
Played by Olivia Newton-John in Grease (1978, dir. Randal Kleiser)

Although she spends most of the film as the queen of the prudes, she still manages to make John Travolta jump hurdles to win her heart. She’s as sweet as her poodle skirts, and she can sing too. The best part? She’s only a hop, a drive-in, and a carnival away from transforming into Bad Sandy, the hot-to-trot herald of the swinging ’60s.

Defining Moment: Courtesy of a makeover, Bad Sandy—in black pants, red heels, and a leather jacket—brings her man to his knees. And yes, Newton-John did have to be sewn into those pants. (Paramount DVD)

88. Raymond Babbitt
Played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (1988, dir. Barry Levinson)

An excellent-driving, card-counting autistic savant, Raymond “Rain Man” Babbitt lives an ordered, institutional life until his flashy kid brother, Charlie (Tom Cruise), kidnaps him for their dad’s inheritance. Behind Ray’s tottering gait, cocked head, and stare into middle distance, Hoffman creates a fully realized human being. Definitely.

Defining Moment: Charlie runs a hot bath, and Ray, haunted by a memory, flies into a panicked fit. (MGM DVD)

87. Captain Jack Sparrow
Played by Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003, dir. Gore Verbinksi)

Only an actor as eccentrically inventive as Depp could morph Errol Flynn circa Captain Blood with Keith Richards circa Exile on Main St., and add a soupçon of swishbuckling ambiguity to his elegantly wasted mannerisms. While it’s never clear whether Jack is hero or villain, what’s certain is that despite his failings as a pirate, he thinks he’s one pretty hip buccaneer.

Defining Moment: His arrival in Port Royal is marked by triumphant music and a dramatic tracking shot of Captain Jack set against an exquisite sky. As the scene continues, it’s revealed that his vessel is a decrepit dinghy, barely able to make it to the dock before sinking. (Touchstone DVD)

86. Melanie Daniels
Played by Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

A wealthy, impetuous party girl—the Paris Hilton of her day—Melanie gets shaken out of her complacency by malevolent forces of nature after her arrival in bucolic Bodega Bay. In three short days, she endures inexplicable bird attacks and discovers unexpected reserves of strength and caring. As played by Hedren, a former model (and Melanie Griffith’s mother), she is the ne plus ultra of Hitchcock’s icy blonds—her hair in a tight French roll, her chic suit immaculate until the final, most savage onslaught. Is she a harbinger of catastrophe or the only woman who can complete the Brenners’ fractured family? The Birds offers no easy answers.

Defining Moment: When she ventures alone into a bedroom to investigate some rustlings. For the five days shooting this scene, Hedren had real birds hurled at her, and a visiting Cary Grant told her, “I think you’re the bravest lady I’ve ever met.” (Universal DVD)

85. Stanley Kowalski
Played by Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951, dir. Elia Kazan)

From the moment he appears onscreen—remarking that his shirt is sticking to him and promptly peeling it off—he has no predecessor and no equal. Surly, sweaty, mocking, muscular, and dangerous as only the young Brando could be, Stanley blasted a path through all the stilted, mannered depictions that American cinema had known before. Throughout the film he stalks his sister-in-law, Blanche (Vivien Leigh), with an incendiary combination of barely leashed cruelty and knowing hunger until their final violent confrontation, which leaves her broken and him an indelible icon.

Defining Moment: Stanley stands at the bottom of the stairs, dripping wet, in a torn T-shirt, screaming for his mate. Every anguished yell is charged with pure animal lust, need, and loss—everything Hays Code Hollywood had been excruciatingly careful to keep offscreen till then. (Warner DVD)

84. Darth Vader
Played by David Prowse and voiced by James Earl Jones in Star Wars (1977, dir. George Lucas) and two later films

In 1977, moviegoers feverishly wondered: What was this heavy-breathing, black-caped, Dr. Doom–looking thing? A robot? A man? Both? With every guess at the evil behind the mask, this Dark Lord’s mystique grew. With his megalomaniacal determination and merciless sadism—not to mention those flashes of fascist symbolism—Darth Vader is the ultimate badass, and audiences often rooted for him rather than whiny Luke Skywalker.

Defining Moment: In The Empire Strikes Back, Vader reveals himself as Luke’s father. His inner conflict begins here, as he reaches out to his long-lost son (after slicing off the boy’s hand) and proposes that they rule together. (The DVD is due in September.)

83. William “Bill the Butcher” Cutting
Played by Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York (2002, dir. Martin Scorsese)

The sinewy, eagle-eyed (literally—the glass orb in his left socket has an American Eagle engraved on it) ruler of downtown Manhattan’s Five Points is so charismatically scary that, in his quieter moments, he can make you believe that his dog-eat-dog tribalism is a policy of sweet reason. But when crossed, he shows an appalling, venal viciousness that demonstrates his nickname is more than just an indication that he can carve up a nice pork roast. “This man is a tough man; he has his hands in raw meat all day,” says Scorsese. “It makes it very immediate—maybe he cannot find the soul, because his hands are in the gristle.” Bill “considers himself a great patriot,” says Day-Lewis. “He was born in America. Anyone who gets off the boat, as far as he is concerned, is subhuman. I could get away with creating my own code of behavior because he comes from the part of society where etiquette did not play a huge part. It’s not like The Age of Innocence, where people had to be bound and corseted by a rigid system of behavior.”

Defining Moment: For most, his flag-draped soliloquy; for gossipy industry insiders, the part where he stabs a fellow card player through the hand and says, “Don’t make that noise again, Harvey.” (Touchstone DVD)

82. Jack Torrance
Played by Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

Writer’s block, while thoroughly terrifying, is a bit of a novel concept to base a horror film around. But throw in a desolate hotel built on an Indian burial ground, a psychic son who talks through his imaginary friend, and Shelley Duvall’s shrill voice, and . . . well, it’s a wonder nonproducing writer Jack Torrance doesn’t pick up his ax sooner. Few monsters are more frightening than the loving and trusted dad (played to tightly wound perfection by Nicholson) who suddenly vows to “bash your brains in.”

Defining Moment: After wife Wendy (Duvall) accuses him of trying to strangle their son, Jack strolls into the Overlook Hotel’s Gold Room and falls off the wagon with a thud, ordering a drink from a previously nonexistent bartender during what seems to be a full-blown hallucination. (Warner DVD)

81. Aurora Greenway
Played by Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment (1983, dir. James L. Brooks) and one later film

A terrifying tsunami of maternal angst, Aurora is uptight, neurotic, obsessive-compulsive, overbearing, hypercritical, and, maddeningly, always right. No mere foil for her endlessly forgiving (and cancer-stricken) daughter, MacLaine’s Oscar-winning rendering of a controlling shrew is somehow endearing despite and because of her flaws. Kind of like, well, your mother.

Defining Moment: On the eve of her daughter’s wedding, motherly responsibility compels her to issue the following warning: “If
you marry, it will be a mistake of such gigantic proportions it will ruin your life and make wretched your destiny.” As usual, her well-intentioned but poisonous premonition turns out to be eerily accurate. (Paramount DVD)

80. Sam Spade
Played by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941, dir. John Huston)

The character that made Bogie a star, gumshoe Sam Spade has seen more angles than a geometry professor and spotted more lies than a polygraph, but his latest case, involving a precious statuette known as the Maltese Falcon and the assorted (and colorful) villains scheming to get it, will sternly test his hard-boiled instincts. He’ll solve the case, all right, but not before he loses his partner, gets hassled by the cops, has multiple guns pointed at him, gets drugged, loses the girl and wins her back and loses her again, and utters one of cinema’s most famous closing lines.

Defining Moment: When he turns over said girl (Mary Astor) to the cops, despite the fact that he loves her. Hey, he’s nobody’s sap. (Warner DVD)

79. Hans Beckert
Played by Peter Lorre in M (1931, dir. Fritz Lang)

First seen only in shadow, identifiable through his whistling of "In the Hall of the Mountain King," this pathetic, bad-baby–faced child murderer comes into full view making faces in a mirror—the monster with no sense of self. For much of the film he is pursued like an animal, and while we can't possibly sympathize with him, Lang's deft filmmaking forces us to feel his fear. Once he is brought before a kangaroo court he reacts like an animal—a cornered rat, to be precise. But still . . .

Defining Moment: His shriek that none of his tormentors knows what it's like to be him. "Thank God," we sigh. (Criterion DVD)

78. “Mad” Max Rockatansky
Played by Mel Gibson in Mad Max (1979, dir. George Miller) and two later films

Max is a cowboy, but his steed is a souped-up hot rod from hell. And his terrain is not the Old West but an anarchic, later radiation-fried Outback peopled with mohawked nutjobs and various other desperados, all competing for the most precious resource left: fuel. Max, like the antiheroes of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, mostly looks out for number one, but when his interests intersect with those of doomed innocents, he can usually be counted on to save the day.

Defining Moment: Near the end of the original, our hero (then just a cop with stellar driving skills) sees his family slaughtered by the same brand of sickos he’ll encounter later. It’s enough to make Max really, really mad. (MGM DVD)

77. Annie Wilkes
Played by Kathy Bates in Misery (1990, dir. Rob Reiner)

In psychotic ex-nurse Annie Wilkes, Stephen King imagined a number-one fan that no writer would want—and then he stranded injured author Paul Sheldon at her isolated farmhouse. In this meaty role, Bates perfectly balances comedy and cruelty. Her Annie is a Spam-serving, pig-chasing, Liberace-grooving loon with a taste for torture and, alas for Paul (that dirty bird!), the upper hand.

Defining Moment: Distressed by the thought of her favorite writer recovering and leaving her, Annie proves her sick devotion by smashing his legs with a sledgehammer. Her cold logic and execution make for one “oogie” moment. (MGM DVD)

76. Tony Manero
Played by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever (1977, dir. John Badham) and one later film

All you need to know about Tony Manero—his arrogance, his sexual hunger, and a charm that walks hand in hand with a seething resentment—plays out in the film’s first few minutes as he swaggers down the street, swivel-hipped, lean, and sexy as hell. And then he dances. Travolta battled original director John G. Avildsen to preserve the screenplay’s darkness, and what comes through is a basically unlikable character on the page—racist, chauvinistic, egotistical—given a subtle sweetness and vulnerability by Travolta’s layered performance.

Defining Moment: Alone on the dance floor, Tony revels in his power. The sequence was first edited entirely in close-up, but Travolta’s understandable hissy fit saved it. (Paramount DVD)

75. Dr. Strangelove
Played by Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

“Strangelove, what kind of name is that? That ain’t no kraut name, is it?”

“He changed it from Merkwurdichliebe when he became a citizen.”

As the world stands at the brink of nuclear annihilation, a couple of War Room attendants speculate about the most bizarre “expert” in the joint—the wheelchair-bound, chain-smoking German with the dark glasses and one black-gloved hand whose theories on apocalyptic gamesmanship represent the point where realpolitik gets real, real gone. His creators were inspired by Wernher Von Braun. But he is ultimately sui generis, one of the greatest comic mutations Kubrick and Sellers—or anybody else, for that matter—ever conceived.

Defining Moment: His final proposal in the War Room, delivered as he’s trying to prevent his gloved hand from strangling him. (Columbia TriStar DVD)

74. Tony Montana
Played by Al Pacino in Scarface (1983, dir. Brian De Palma)

“Nothing exceeds like excess,” says trophy wife Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer), and this Miami-set update of the 1932 crime drama certainly doesn’t stint on cash, cocaine, or gunfire. Pacino discovers his inner over-actor after a career heretofore defined by measured restraint. The result is an almost comically galvanic characterization, abetted by dialogue that’s now legendary (“Say hello to my leetle friend!”). The picture inadvertently provided a role model to the hip-hop nation, even up to the gruesome, ego-driven finale, in which this chaotic wild man learns, as so many have, that money can’t buy you love. (Not even his own depraved conception of it, as it happens.)

Defining Moment: “Why don’t you try sticking your head up your ass—see if it fits.” Even at gunpoint and with a chain saw about to slice open his friend Angel’s head, Tony doesn’t know when to shut up. (Universal DVD)

73. Norma Rae
Played by Sally Field in Norma Rae (1979, dir. Martin Ritt)

This prickly, working-class divorcée and mother of two may seem an unlikely ally for the liberal New Yorker (Ron Leibman) out to unionize her southern textile factory, but he sees in her what we do: a woman looking for a better deal. Norma Rae may be uneducated and brimming with resentment, but once she commits to the cause, she’s like Scarlett O’Hara in her single-mindedness.

Defining Moment: She stands on a factory table, silently brandishing a sign that reads “Union.” It’s the look on her face, though—a mixture of defiance, desperation, and hope—that gets the message across. (Fox DVD)

72. Lloyd Dobler
Played by John Cusack in Say Anything (1989, dir. Cameron Crowe)

“Did you really come here with with Lloyd Dobler? How did that happen?” asks a fellow reveler when golden girl Diane (Ione Skye) shows up with Cusack’s slacker at a graduation party. “He made me laugh,” she says. He made us laugh, too. Who wouldn’t love the Clash T-shirt–wearing, suicidal songwriter–befriending, kick-boxing, excruciatingly earnest guy whose career goal is to be a good date?

Defining Moment: When Diane’s dad (John Mahoney) grills Lloyd at the dinner table about his future, Lloyd responds with some inverted articles of faith: “I don’t want
to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed. . . .” (Fox DVD)

71. Rev. Harry Powell
Played by Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter (1955, dir. Charles Laughton)

Before Johnny Cash was dubbed “the Man in Black,” Robert Mitchum played a preacher whose garb was as dark as his soul. Ingratiating himself into the life of a young widow (Shelley Winters), he doesn’t take long to make his avaricious motives known; and after he’s dispatched her he has no compunction about terrorizing her kids in order to find a treasure he believes they hold the key to. And all the while, there’s something genuinely, well, evangelical about his murderous fervor.

Defining Moment: Explaining his “Love” and “Hate” tattoos: “Ah, little lad, you’re staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right hand/left hand? The story of good and evil?” (MGM DVD)

70. Judy Benjamin
Played by Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin (1980, dir. Howard Zieff)

Star and executive producer Hawn never envisioned Nancy Meyers’s comedic script about a Jewish princess-divorcée (and widow) who joins the Army as a “full-on feminist film,” she says. “I mean, what’s so heroic about walking away from what’s bad in your life?” Well, nothing—but that’s exactly why Private Judy Benjamin is so likable. She has more flaws than Swiss cheese has holes, yet she still shows up the Thornbirds. Though she played a feisty naïf (“Is green the only color these come in?” Judy asks about her fatigues), Hawn was all business offscreen as both a producer and a new mom: “Kate [Hudson] was nine months old, and I took her to the office with me every day.” Fortunately, there was no need for boot-camp conditioning. “I had just had a baby and was already on the case,” she says. “Getting back into shape was an everyday effort.” Physical comedy, costars like Eileen Brennan (“my friend from Laugh-In”), and “jokes that were driven by character instead of mindless shtick” all combined to make Private Benjamin click.

Defining Moment: “When Judy’s parents came to take her away from the Army,” Hawn says. “The sergeant was overjoyed she was leaving and held the release document in front of her face, coaxing her to sign on the dotted line. That marked the beginning of Judy’s awakening.” (Warner DVD)

69. Terry Malloy
Played by Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront (1954, dir. Elia Kazan)

Cinema’s most multileveled palooka, Terry Malloy, a boxer-turned-dockworker, is going through life’s motions, until he finds redemption through a difficult love: He falls for the sister of a friend he unwittingly set up for murder. With his Method mumbling, dead-on improvisations, and battered features (Kazan attributed this to the cold wintertime shoot), Brando transforms himself from loser to crusading idealist, though his worst beating comes from telling the truth about corruption.

Defining Moment: His speech in the taxicab after Terry realizes that his brother Charley’s betrayal led to his downfall. “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. . . . It was you, Charley.” (Columbia TriStar DVD)

68. Alex DeLarge
Played by Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

He loves Beethoven, his bowler hat, and a bit of the old in-out, but it’s ultraviolence that he truly relishes. Alex, the sophisticated young hooligan from novelist Anthony Burgess’s futuristic dystopia, comes close to making murder, rape, and the wanton destruction of small animals look like Saturday-night fun. We know he’s devoid of any moral compass, but we don’t want to see him fitted for an artificial one either—not just on principle, but because of the multiple charms of McDowell’s performance.

Defining Moment: Attacking a couple in their home with his band of droogs, Alex does a version of “Singin’ in the Rain” (McDowell’s own on-set inspiration) that earned Kubrick, and probably McDowell, the eternal enmity of Gene Kelly. (Warner DVD)

67. Inspector Jacques Clouseau
Played by Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther (1964, dir. Blake Edwards) and four later movies (not counting the outtakes that constitute Trail of the Pink Panther)

No one can butcher a French accent or recover a diamond quite like Clouseau. He began movie life as a particularly hapless cuckold but soon came to represent the ultimate in bumbling would-be crime-solvers. In his low-brimmed hat and trench coat, Sellers stumbled his way through a series of increasingly outlandish comic misadventures, wreaking slapstick havoc, weathering Kato’s surprise attacks, and impersonating everything from the Hunchback of Notre Dame to a salty sea dog.

Defining Moment: In 1976’s The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Clouseau gets his hand stuck in a chain mail glove, which is connected to a spiked flail. He inadvertently clobbers a piano to objections of “That’s a priceless Steinway!” “Not anymore,” he replies. (The series is available on MGM DVD and Artisan DVD.)

66. Navin Johnson, a.k.a. the Jerk
Played by Steve Martin in The Jerk (1979, dir. Carl Reiner)

“I was born a poor, black child,” Navin Johnson says in this “rags-to-riches-to-rags story,” which uses many of the bits Martin was doing in his standup act at the time. His tuna-, Tab-, and Twinkie-loving loser isn’t so much a jerk as he is a gullible know-nothing with a golden heart who stumbles through Jerry Lewis–style misadventures with his trusty dog, Shithead. (In fact, Martin says, the movie’s original title was Easy Money. “I had just read The Idiot by Dostoevsky, and I said to Carl Reiner, ‘I need a title like that.’ And I just came up with The Jerk.”) How could Johnson have known that Opti-grab, the invention that made him fabulously wealthy, would cause folks to go cockeyed? In the end, he may lose his wealth, power, and “all-red billiard room with the giant stuffed camel,” but he’ll still have his family, his woman (Bernadette Peters), and, yes, his Thermos.

Defining Moment: In Martin’s favorite scene, the Jerk is inexplicably targeted by a sniper at a gas station. As oil cans explode around him with each missed shot, he deduces that “he hates these cans. Stay away from the cans!” A previous scene that explains more about the sniper (sort of) was cut: “He was practicing at a rifle range, and he realized he was a terrible shot,” says Martin. “All you hear is him muttering, ‘Gonna kill. Kill the bastards.’ He’s just a random angry guy.” (Universal DVD)

65. Edward Scissorhands
Played by Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands (1990, dir. Tim Burton)

The unfinished creation of an eccentric inventor (Vincent Price), Edward is Burton’s take on Frankenstein’s monster. His menacing appearance belies a gentle, lonely soul, one far too fragile to fit into the cookie-cutter suburb where he’s taken by a good-hearted Avon lady (Dianne Wiest) after she’s called on his isolated castle. Though Edward is made by man, he has the soul of an artist (specialty: haircuts and topiary), and he cannot stomach the ugliness of the community that first embraces, then manipulates, and finally rejects him.

Defining Moment: When the girl he loves (Winona Ryder) whispers, “Hold me,” it’s a bittersweet moment for this consummate outsider. Edward raises his scissor hands, hesitates, and then sadly tells her, “I can’t.” (Fox DVD)

64. Rocky Balboa
Played by Sylvester Stallone in Rocky (1976, dir. John G. Avildsen) and four later films

The year was 1976, and after so much cynical, Watergate-era fare at the cinema, bicentennial America craved something exhilarating. That jolt came in the form of a streetwise southpaw boxer named Rocky Balboa. When the reigning champion, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), plucks the sometimes painfully slow and raw Rocky from bad-side-of-Philly obscurity by challenging him to a world-class fight, it’s time for our hero to step up—and prove once and for all that he’s not “just another bum from the neighborhood.” His triumph comes from going the distance—and getting the (unlikely) girl, a super-shy librarian whose name makes up half of the movie’s most repeated mantra: “Yo, Adrian.”

Defining Moment: Rocky runs through the streets in the early morning. As the energetic theme song climaxes, he races up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and turns around to face the city, fists high in the air, victorious. (MGM DVD)

63. Carrie White
Played by Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976, dir. Brian De Palma)

It starts with a shower and ends in a bloodbath. As the students at the aptly named Bates High School are about to discover, creepy Carrie White is coming into her own. And that spells telekinetic disaster for all who torment the skittish loner with the loony mom—and for quite a few innocent bystanders as well. De Palma’s take on Stephen King’s first novel, a masterful mix of horror and adolescent angst, launched the director’s career and brought Spacek the first of her six Oscar nominations. “All the kids think I’m funny,” says Carrie, who yearns to be pretty in pink at the prom. “I want to be normal.” Not bloody likely.

Defining Moment: The opening shower scene in the girls’ locker room, in which Carrie gets her first period and shatters her first light bulb. Spacek has likened it to “being hit by a Mack truck.” (MGM DVD)

62. John Shaft
Played by Richard Roundtree in Shaft (1971, dir. Gordon Parks)

“Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the . . . ” Yeah, yeah, we know. But back then, movie audiences had never seen anyone like John Shaft. Up to that time, most African-Americans were depicted as having to adjust to a white world (see number 20, Sidney Poitier’s Virgil Tibbs) or simply as jive-talking muggers or delinquents. With his sexual prowess, huge ego, skill with a gun, and take-no-prisoners approach to criminal justice, Shaft wasn’t having any of that. Miscreants (white or black) beware, this cat Shaft is a bad mother. . . .

Defining Moment: Before the opening credits finish rolling, we learn just how bad a mother Shaft is. With the Isaac Hayes theme music grooving in the background, Shaft emerges from a 42nd Street subway station, strolls Frogger-style into oncoming traffic, and flips off a driver who has the gall to honk his horn. (Warner DVD)

61. J.J. Hunsecker
Played by Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success (1957, dir. Alexander Mackendrick)

The ice-pick–sharp dialogue certainly didn’t hurt matters, but it’s Lancaster’s physical indomitability that distinguishes this self-righteous snake of an N.Y.C. gossip columnist. “I love this dirty town,” Hunsecker mutters to hapless press agent and cat’s-paw Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis)—and when you hear that, you wonder what his definition of love could possibly be.

Defining Moment: Holding frigid court at one of his regular nightspots, Hunsecker eviscerates Falco, a senator whom he calls a friend, his bimbo consort, and her manager. This is a guy who’s got everybody’s number—except, as we’ll eventually see, his own. (MGM DVD)

60. George Bailey
Played by James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, dir. Frank Capra)

George Bailey’s everyman charm reminds us that it doesn’t take a war to make a hero. In fact, a man can do something big and important even in a town as small as Bedford Falls. He saves his brother’s life, lends money to the poor, and prevents the lovely Mary (Donna Reed) from becoming an old maid. The sometimes hapless angel Clarence says it best: “You see, George, you really had a wonderful life.” But, as portrayed by a frequently frantic Stewart, he has to go though hell to realize that.

Defining Moment: During their first dance, George and Mary fall into a swimming pool, but they still don’t miss a beat. (Republic Studios DVD)

59. Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore
Played by Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now (1979, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

Coppola’s more expansive Apocalypse Now Redux made his poetic dissection of America’s most torturous war all the more pointed, but Duvall’s portrayal of a gung-ho airborne cavalry commander remains this masterpiece’s manic high point. Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard, en route to a fateful rendezvous with Brando’s Colonel Kurtz, can only gape as Kilgore leads a helicopter assault on a beachside village, taking time out to run a surfing demo.

Defining Moment: Kilgore pauses in his barking for a quietly chilling soliloquy. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” he intones to Willard, going on to describe an annihilating bombing run on an enemy stronghold: “ . . . the whole hill. Smelled like . . . victory.” (Paramount DVD)

58. Phyliss Dietrichson
Played by Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944, dir. Billy Wilder)

Set in a shadowy, twilit Los Angeles, this yarn was among the first true noirs—flashback narration, hard-boiled protagonist, and all. It also showcases one of the most fatale of femmes. Stanwyck’s devious Mrs. Dietrichson slinks around in just a towel, coming on strong to her soon-to-be-stooge Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray), who’s dropped in to ask her absent, older husband about an insurance renewal. Despite the ill-fitting blond wig (Wilder’s suggestion), the one-liners, and the crocodile tears, she’s a seductress who wastes no time hiding her intentions.

Defining Moment: Her fear and—could it be?—regret are palpable after Neff has done her dirty work, and suspicions have been aroused. (Image Entertainment DVD)

57. Tom Powers
Played by James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931, dir. William Wellman)

Something of a charming sociopath at first, Cagney’s gangster is a blustery guy who’s always looking for a new angle. In this breathless tale of his rise and fall, we see an operator who just can’t get no satisfaction, which leads him to such antisocial behavior as mushing a grapefruit half in some dame’s face. And as much of a prick as he’s been, when he finally reaches his grisly end, you sort of feel it didn’t have to be this bad.

Defining Moment: A rare glimpse of self-awareness as he’s shot down in the rain: “I ain’t so tough.” (Warner VHS)

56. Alan Swann
Played by Peter O’Toole in My Favorite Year (1982, dir. Richard Benjamin)

A riff on real-life onetime swashbuckling matinee idol Errol Flynn, Swann is an irrepressible sot who can’t do stage work to save his life. Which presents something of a dilemma for the producers of King Kaiser’s live ’50s-era TV show (loosely based on Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows). Junior writer Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) is designated Swann’s keeper, and the determined-to-misbehave rotter shows Benjy a thing or two about living—and drinking—before showtime.

Defining Moment: Anytime Swann falls down, maybe . . . but truly, the triumphant horseback ride through Central Park. (Warner DVD)

55. The Dude
Played by Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski (1998, dir. Joel Coen)

“Sometimes there’s a man,” goes Sam Elliott’s framing voice-over for this smoking man’s cult classic, “I won’t say a hero . . . possibly the laziest [man] in Los Angeles County. . . . ” Meet Jeff Lebowski, a.k.a. the Dude, a former radical who enjoys bowling and “the occasional acid flashback.” Mistaken by crooks for a much richer namesake, the Dude must work to solve a mystery that’s only deepened by his lifestyle (“I’m adhering to a pretty strict drug regimen to keep my mind limber,” he notes). “The whole Raymond Chandler aspect of it, I didn’t delve into that much,” Bridges says. “I didn’t think of the Dude fancying himself as a private investigator—he just happened to fall into that role.” Real-life Coen brothers friend and Dude prototype Jeff Dowd, an indie film rep, says Bridges quickly inhabited the part (“I’m a pretty easy act to get”), taking Dowd’s ’60s nostalgia and laid-back mumble into absurdist vignettes with costars John Goodman, Julianne Moore, and John Turturro. The Dude’s “a total slacker,” says Bridges. “I wouldn’t want that in my real life, but to go with that sensibility in a film was kind of fun. It’s his world, and he can do whatever the fuck he wants.”

Defining Moment: His postcoital chat with Moore’s Maude plumbs Dudean depths back to his student radical days: “I was one of the authors of the Port Huron Statement—the original . . . not the compromised second draft.” (Universal DVD)

54. Frank Booth
Played by Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet (1986, dir. David Lynch)

Frank Booth has a way with words, and with women (“Don’t you fucking look at me!”; “Daddy wants to fuck!”; “I’ll fuck anything that moves!”). He has a bit of a temper, but he’s also a complete softie when the right song is played. He was a fan of Pabst Blue Ribbon long before it became fashionable. He’s reasonably skilled in impromptu surgery. He dresses well when circumstances require it. And he’s one of the most monstrously funny creations in cinema history.

Defining Moment: Frank’s entrance, in which, sucking on who knows what through his oxygen mask, he demonstrates to Dorothy (an extremely game Isabella Rossellini) and viewers his peculiar idea of foreplay. (MGM DVD)

53. Ninotchka
Played by Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939, dir. Ernst Lubitsch)

“Garbo laughs” was the film’s tag line, and, yes, the heretofore serious actress lightens up in Lubitsch’s quick-witted comedy. A Russian envoy dispatched to Paris to unbungle her comrades’ mess, Ninotchka is all business, from her severe suit to her no-play agenda. To her, love is “merely a chemical reaction.” But when she succumbs to the charms of European playboy Leon (Melvyn Douglas), her communist economy gives way to capitalistic frivolity. Chemically speaking, the woman melts.

Defining Moment: Ninotchka’s wooing in a Paris bistro. When Leon, in a huff because his jokes don’t even get a smile, accidentally falls off his chair, she throws back her head and howls with laughter. Turns out this uptight Russian is a doll. (MGM VHS)

52. Howard Beale
Played by Peter Finch in Network (1976, dir. Sidney Lumet)

Is he an “angry prophet denouncing the hypocrisies of our times” . . . or just nuts? The newscaster’s populist rants are so vehement that it’s hard to discern the uncomfortable truths behind them. Finch won a posthumous Oscar for his all-over-the-map portrayal of Beale, which ranges from serene fatalism in the face of termination to messianic tirades on the air to, finally, his destruction, sacrificed as a ratings stunt.

Defining Moment: Everyone remembers “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” But his best moment is one of silence: As the network president delivers a sermon on the divinity of corporate America, the once-raving Beale sits silently in the foreground, focused, calm, understanding everything. (Warner DVD)

51. Freddy Krueger
Played by Robert Englund in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, dir. Wes Craven) and too many later films

It was not so much the character as his concept that made him terrifying—a boogeyman who killed you by invading your dreams. But his particulars—the burn-scarred face; the sweater that, it would seem, he stole off a Muppet; his sarcastic sneer; his bloodthirstiness; and of course, that claw—were so perfectly suited to the concept that Freddy became a mythic figure.

Defining Moment: From the first film, the only one really worth taking seriously: Freddy pins a victim to the ceiling before starting to slash. It’s one of the most genuinely sadistic scenes in movies. (New Line DVD)

50. Blondie
Played by Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966, dir. Sergio Leone)

The most prevalent myth about the first two pictures Eastwood made with Leone was that his character in both was the Man With No Name. Not only does the character have a name, they’re two different characters—Joe and Monco. Go figure. In the great finale of the Dollars trilogy, we remember the name Blondie because Tuco says it so often, and because Eastwood’s not much of a blond. When you come right down to it, the tag is apt because Blondie—a fairly treacherous character cast as the titular “good”—is as California as Eastwood: the most laid-back badass of the spaghetti western, or any other kind.

Defining Moment: His writing-the-name-on-the-rock gambit before the climactic, operatic shootout. (MGM DVD)

49. Chance the Gardener
Played by Peter Sellers in Being There (1979, dir. Hal Ashby)

It says something rather unnerving about Sellers that he identified so strongly with this nowhere man that he printed up calling cards bearing his name. Loosed into the world after a lifetime of isolation, Chance, an illiterate, TV-addicted gardener, becomes an unwitting sage in the haute monde of Washington, D.C. With his impeccable bearing and affectless intonations, he is a cipher both funny and frightening, making utter vacancy look like Zen inscrutability.

Defining Moment: His bland but insistent mantra “I like to watch” is misinterpreted by a loving but carnally deprived society wife (Shirley MacLaine), who takes it as a cue to pleasure herself before him. (Warner DVD)

48. John “Bluto” Blutarsky
Played by John Belushi in Animal House (1978, dir. John Landis)

From the moment the camera finds him peeing in the bushes and then on Delta House’s lost-looking recruits, Bluto (whom Belushi and Landis thought of as a cross between Harpo Marx and the Cookie Monster) is the vision of a pure, primal id disguised as a college degenerate. But what separates this untamed soul from lesser cinematic knuckle-draggers (played by the likes of Andrew Dice Clay and Pauly Shore) is the knowing mischief Belushi wordlessly conveys with the deft emotional precision of Buster Keaton.

Defining Moment: The food fight scene lets Bluto achieve maximum shock value. “See if you can guess what I am now,” he says, filling his cheeks with mashed potatoes and spraying the slimy contents on a sorority Barbie. “I’m a zit! Get it?” (Universal DVD)

47. Mrs. Robinson
Played by Anne Bancroft in The Graduate (1967, dir. Mike Nichols)

“You’re trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson . . . aren’t you?” Oh, Benjamin, of course she is. For a dissatisfied housewife (the character doesn’t even have a first name), there’s no greater distraction than bedding the young Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman). And thanks to the perfectly cast (though only six years senior) Bancroft, Mrs. Robinson not only became the archetype for the older woman as seductress, but also the source of distraction for many an adolescent male.

Defining Moment: Benjamin gives her his car keys and tells her she can drive herself home. After she says she doesn’t know how to “work a foreign shift” (yeah, sure), she tosses the keys into the fish tank, showing us all who’s really driving. (MGM DVD)

46. John McClane
Played by Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988, dir. John McTiernan) and two later films

If Humphrey Bogart had been around in the ’80s, he would have loved Willis’s wise-cracking John McClane. A seductive mix of machismo and humility, Willis reinvented the reluctant hero for the action age: a cigarette-smoking tough guy who was freaked out by flying; a balding, by-the-book New York cop who hated authority. McClane doesn’t want to be in California for Christmas. Nor is he eager to knuckle up against 12 heavily armed Eurotrash terrorists. But he does, and we love every explosive moment.

Defining Moment: Alan Rickman’s deliciously evil Hans Gruber asks him, “Do you really think you stand a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?” The reply still inspires instantaneous high-fiving: “Yippee-kay-yay, motherfucker!” (Fox DVD)

45. Mary Poppins
Played by Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964, dir. Robert Stevenson)

With her unflinching optimism, her rosy cheeks, and her chipper commands of “Spit spot!” Mary has the power to cheer up a gloomy London family. Born in the books by P.L.
Travers, the Poppins character was played to comely perfection by squeaky-clean Andrews, who won an Oscar. “I’ll only stay until the wind changes,” Mary Poppins tells
little Jane and Michael Banks, but for fans everywhere, she’s stayed much longer than that.

Defining Moment: The children resist tidying their nursery until their magical nanny shows them how to make the task fun. She sings, “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!” (Touchstone DVD)

44. Jules Winnfield
Played by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction (1994, dir. Quentin Tarantino)

“I looked at him as not just a badass, but as a guy who was totally professional and in control of his world,” Jackson says about our man from Inglewood. Sure, Jules was a stone-cold killer, but he was also a philosopher, engaging in his own version of the Socratic method (“What does Marsellus Wallace look like?. . . Does he look like a bitch?!?!”). He not only talked tough; he looked scary as hell—especially his hair. “That was an accident,” Jackson says. “Quentin wanted Jules to have a big afro. He sent this PA out to buy a wig. She went to South Central and bought this jeri-curl wig. And Quentin was going off, saying, ‘It’s got to be an afro because he has this whole blaxploitation thing.’ I told him, ‘That’s the South Central look.’ You look at Ice Cube and NWA. Guys had all this shit dripping down their necks. I had already grown the sideburns and the mustache. It was perfect. Total gangster.”

Defining Moment: “Folks always talk about the foot massage sequence,” Jackson says. “People like the Ezekiel speech. I have to say that speech about three times a week to people, just to prove that I still know it. And the Quarter Pounder with Cheese thing. But I always liked the ‘what’ sequence: ‘What? Say “what” again. Do they speak English in “what”?’ That’s my favorite.” (Touchstone DVD)

43. Forrest Gump
Played by Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump (1994, dir. Robert Zemeckis)

As the ads said, “Gump happens,” and did it ever. Tom Hanks’s portrayal of the kindhearted, mentally challenged southerner is at once tender, goofy, and breathtaking, earning him his second Oscar. The character’s life is a prism through which we view our nation’s modern history, and accordingly, Forrest does it all. From Elvis to JFK, Mao to Nixon and Lennon, from Vietnam to antiwar protests, Forrest doesn’t miss much, and along the way he finds friendship, seeks love, and witnesses horror.

Defining Moment: You know it, you love it: Forrest has struck up a conversation with the woman seated next to him on a bus-stop bench. “My momma always said life
was like a box of chocolates,” he tells her. “You never know what you’re gonna get.” (Paramount DVD)

42. “Dirty” Harry Callahan
Played by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry (1971, dir. Don Siegel) and four later films

Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan tapped into the silent majority’s longing for frontier justice following the upheavals of the ’60s. And who better to brandish his .44 Magnum than Eastwood, who had become a star dispatching evildoers in Sergio Leone westerns. Crankier and less laconic than the Man With No Name, Harry patented the cool one-liner, a staple of every action hero to come.

Defining Moment: In the 1971 original, Harry is informed that the killer he has just apprehended and tortured will walk because Harry violated his rights. “Well, the law’s crazy!” is his incredulous reply. For an instant, we wonder if the cop is more dangerous than the criminal. (Warner DVD)

41. Jane Craig
Played by Holly Hunter in Broadcast News (1987, dir. James L. Brooks)

One of cinema’s most delightfully complex and obsessive heroines, news producer Jane Craig can’t enter a cab without telling the driver the quickest route, nor can she begin her day without a brief crying jag. Brisk, capable, overscheduled, and brutally honest, she seems to know everything except how she feels emotionally. Caught between her neurotic soul mate (Albert Brooks) and the airhead anchor she lusts after (William Hurt), she has no idea how to reconcile her head and her heart. (Even director James L. Brooks was conflicted about her choice until the very end.) It’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Hunter as this winning, though never winsome, working girl.

Defining Moment: When her boss snaps at her, “It must be nice to always believe you know better—to always think you’re the smartest person in the room,” Jane admits, “No, it’s awful.” (Fox DVD)

40. The Terminator
Played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984, dir. James Cameron) and two later films

Before The Terminator, Schwarzenegger was viewed as little more than a B-list barbarian. But Cameron helped turn his shortcomings into strengths. Not the most expressive actor? Doesn’t matter; he’s a robot. Can’t really pronounce the name “Sarah Connor”? So what? This cyborg lets his muscles do the talking. But seriously—give the newly minted governor the credit he’s due. His intensely singular performance as the killing machine that can’t be reasoned with blew us away in the first film. And in the franchise’s second installment, audiences were surprised to discover that the tin man really does have a heart.

Defining Moment: The “I’ll be back” slaughter scene at the police station is the obvious choice. But a more deserving moment might be when the Terminator takes a scalpel to his own skin in a skanky motel room. After popping out his left eyeball, he stares in the mirror. One mechanical pupil glows a ghastly red. (MGM DVD)

39. Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels
Played by Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (1982, dir. Sydney Pollack)

There has been plenty of famous drag in Hollywood, from Some Like It Hot to Mrs. Doubtfire, but Hoffman’s dual gig as Michael Dorsey, unemployed New Yawk actor, and Dorothy Michaels, popular matronly soap star, resonates loudest with contemporary audiences. With four Oscar nominations (and one win) already to his credit, Hoffman had more than proven his chops by then; but this drama-comedy, male-female dichotomy of a film was something else again. Hoffman based his portrayal of Dorothy largely on his mother (“She’s the heart of Tootsie,” he has said)—but he had a little more specialized help as well: Andy Warhol “superstar” Holly Woodlawn (née Harold Ajzenberg) was hired to teach him the finer points of lipstick and pantyhose.

Defining Moment: His improvised on-air confession, of sorts—“But . . . as a woman!” (Columbia TriStar DVD)

38. Willy Wonka
Played by Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971, dir. Mel Stuart)

He’s Oscar Wilde on a sugar high, from his sparkling aphorisms to his velvet jacket to his glucose-infused factory. “Every kid asks me if the sets were made of real candy,” says Wilder. “Everything you could suck on was real, except when I ate that cup of tea. That was wax.” Willy is the father that Charlie never had. “I’m a magician, a carnival barker,” says Wilder. “I’m all those things to impress the children.” But his psychedelic factory tour is a sugary version of Dante’s inferno. And all the children get their just desserts.

Defining Moment: Wilder dreamed up Willy’s whimsical entrance and made it a condition of his doing the role. After limping down a red carpet, he drops his cane, teeters precariously, and then—to the delight and astonishment of all—executes a perfect somersault. “I wanted that to be a question mark from the beginning—whether I was lying or telling the truth. Otherwise, it was like corned beef on white bread.” (Warner DVD)

37. Jake Gittes
Played by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (1974, dir. Roman Polanski) and one later film

From our first glimpse of Jake Gittes—a private detective who looks infinitely bored and yet oddly vulnerable—we know we’re in a film that honors the noir tradition as epitomized by Bogart’s Sam Spade. Gittes’s features resist softening into anything more compromising than a snarl, and though sliced (his bandaged nose is clownish but unfunny), beaten, and menaced, he refuses to buckle. Faye Dunaway quivers, John Huston looms, but Nicholson’s Gittes seems untouchable inside—until his last stricken moments onscreen.

Defining Moment: A crafty, tough operator who will cheat a cheating world without a blink (with a fake cough, he tears a page from a city ledger), he uses an ethnic slur to hoodwink a nursing home’s oily director. P.S. Don’t insult him during his morning shave. (Paramount DVD)

36. Alex Forrest
Played by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction (1987, dir. Adrian Lyne)

Ah, the extramarital affair. Long lunches . . . short late-night phone calls . . . and no strings! Then came Alex Forrest, and life changed for cheatin’ men. Dan (Michael Douglas) is a lawyer with a gorgeous wife (Anne Archer) and an impish daughter. After a weekend fling with Alex, he expects to return to his world unscathed. Alex expects a lot more. Watching her stalk Dan made a generation of men think twice before straying and the same generation of women hesitate before going all “fatal attraction” on someone’s ass.

Defining Moment: When Dan prepares to leave in the morning, an emotionally and physically exposed (she’s bare-breasted) Alex begs him to stay. “I thought we’d have a good time,” he says. “No, you didn’t,” she replies. “You thought you’d have a good time. You didn’t stop for a second to think about me.” And you know what? She’s got a point. (Paramount DVD)

35. Dr. Evil
Played by Mike Myers in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997, dir. Jay Roach) and two later films

Myers threw us all a frickin’ bone when he created Austin’s pinky-gesturing, lip-pursing, Mr. Bigglesworth–stroking nemesis. The hilarious, nefarious doctor (don’t call him mister—he didn’t spend six years in evil medical school for that) is a delightfully creepy combination of You Only Live Twice baddie Ernst Stavro Blofeld and Saturday Night Live honcho Lorne Michaels. He’s queasily endearing in his lame malevolence—attempting the Macarena, reminiscing about his childhood summers in Rangoon, kvelling over Mini-Me, and, of course . . .

Defining Moment: Unfrozen after 30 years, Dr. Evil reveals to his staff his plans for dominating the planet: “We shall hold the world ransom for . . . one million dollars!!” (New Line DVD)

34. Bonnie Parker
Played by Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde (1967, dir. Arthur Penn)

Likes: adventure, poetry, gumption, Clyde Barrow. Dislikes: whiners, the law, hiding out, mortality. With her flaxen hair, black beret, and slender cigarettes, “the best damn
girl in Texas” is also the most glamorous, especially seen against the film’s Depression-era dust-bowl backdrop. Formerly a waitress, she better fits the profile of the beatific bank robber, who steals from the rich and pities the poor.

Defining Moment: After the gang captures a Texas Ranger, Bonnie decides to have a little fun with him. Suddenly “sweet as pie,” she kisses the humiliated captive smack on the lips for a picture that will later appear in newspapers across the state. (Warner DVD)

33. Ratso Rizzo
Played by Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy (1969, dir. John Schlesinger)

His name says it all: Ratso Rizzo is a New York City gutter-dweller. The sickly, down-and-out hustler spots easy prey in naive cowboy Joe Buck (Jon Voight), but soon he also finds a friend—and hope. The poor shmuck, he just wants to score the bus money to make it to Florida. But this is a story of dreams unfulfilled, and Hoffman’s pathetic street rat, both hilarious and heartbreakingly sad, becomes a kind of tragic hero.

Defining Moment: Ratso’s shrill wail, “I’m walkin’ here!” as he defiantly slaps the hood of an encroaching cab. Hoffman has said that not only was the line ad-libbed but the altercation was unplanned. Which doesn’t surprise us—it’s a true New York moment. (MGM DVD)

32. Holly Golightly
Played by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961, dir. Blake Edwards)

Tiffany’s. Givenchy. Holly Golightly. They go together like milk and a wineglass, coffee and a jar. Holly does seem to go lightly through life, picking up fifty dollars for the powder room and exclaiming “Quel rat!” about her benefactor in the cold morning light. But deep down, this glib party girl is too frightened even to buy furniture or give her cat a name. She wants to find a real-life place that makes her feel like Tiffany’s, where nothing bad could ever happen. Instead, she finds love.

Defining Moment: Vulnerable, wet, and frightened, Holly kisses Paul (George Peppard) in the pouring rain, sheltering Cat under her coat. (Paramount DVD)

31. Norma Desmond
Played by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (1950, dir. Billy Wilder)

She’s the greatest star of them all, the faded queen of 1086 Sunset Boulevard. And despite her rants against talkies, this former silent film star delivers some of the greatest lines ever written: “I am big! It’s the pictures that got small!” and “Great stars have great pride.” Indeed. Swanson’s Desmond, running roughshod over her servant Max (her first director!) and gigolo hack Joe Gillis (William Holden), is a monomaniacal monster of the first stripe.

Defining Moment: Having ensured that Gillis is going to stay on her premises, Norma pulls herself together, as it were, and makes her final glitter-encrusted appearance: “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” (Paramount DVD)

30. King Kong
In King Kong (1933, dirs. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)

In real life this ape was only 18 inches tall; stop-motion animation was so crude at the time that you can see the creature’s “fur” shifting now and then—fingermarks, literally, of his creator, Willis O’Brien. Nevertheless, the first Kong has something today’s CGI masters are hard-pressed to give their monsters: a soul. Kidnapped and forced into servitude, finally emerging defiant, the giant ape reveals facets of a very full personality, making us palpably understand the impossible-to-resist urge to protect one’s mate—even when the “mate” is as size-inappropriate and unwilling as Fay Wray.

Defining Moment: High atop the Empire State Building, the beast risks everything for his beauty. (Warner VHS)

29. Daphne/Jerry
Played by Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot (1959, dir. Billy Wilder)

Saxman Joe (Tony Curtis) and bassist Jerry (Lemmon) have figured out a way to escape the Chicago mob: cross-dress to join an all-girl band with a Florida gig. It’s a cinch for Joe, who’s so slick he concocts another male identity for himself later in the film. But it’s torture for poor Jerry, who soon attracts a most insistent male millionaire. From frustration to confusion to elation back to frustration again, Lemmon enacts one of moviedom’s great comic creations.

Defining Moment: After getting stern behavioral counsel from Joe, Jerry, as miserable as any kid in a candy store could be, lies in the top berth of his almost all-female sleeping car and repeats the litany Joe has given him: “I’m a girl . . . . I’m a girl. . . . I wish I were dead. . . . I’m a girl. . . . ” (MGM DVD)

28. Captain Quint
Played by Robert Shaw in Jaws (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg)

Shaw worked in films for more than a decade before becoming a second-tier star as a character actor. Spielberg knew how to use him best, as the saltiest man on earth, the glowering, irascible fisherman (and shark killer) Quint. Roy Scheider’s citified cop and Richard Dreyfuss’s beady-eyed marine biologist shrink alongside Quint, a force so elemental that either he or the big fish must die when they meet.

Defining Moment: Who can forget the this-time-it’s-personal slide Quint takes to be the shark’s last hot lunch? But the prefiguring speech he makes about surviving the death of the U.S.S. Indianapolis (“When he comes after you, he doesn’t seem to be living until he bites you”) is terror distilled. (Universal DVD)

27. Marge Gunderson
Played by Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996, dir. Joel Coen)

A very pregnant small-town police chief with a thick Minnesota accent, Marge Gunderson could easily have been played for cheap laughs. Instead, there’s something deeply satisfying and innately humorous about the way she doesn’t let the cold climate, the cold people she encounters, or her 30 extra pounds affect her can-do attitude. McDormand says she rejected suggestions by her husband, director Joel Coen, “to do certain pregnancy things, like having trouble getting up out of chairs. I wanted her to be as physically capable as she could. I like the fact that she’s just working. It’s not even a feminist political statement—most people, pregnant or not, have to work.” Surprisingly, she “wasn’t pleased” when she first read the script. “I didn’t think it would be that interesting. I found her sheltered existence kind of scary, a little too reminiscent of my background coming from the Midwest.” But soon she warmed to Marge. “She’s nonjudgmental, and her philosophy of life is pretty simple,” says McDormand, who won an Oscar for the role. “I like that.” The character still looms large: “Little old ladies come up to me and say, ‘I just love that movie.’ I’m like, ‘Do you remember how many people died in the movie?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, but we just love Marge.’ ”

Defining Moment: Arriving at a murder scene, Marge almost loses her breakfast—not because of the gore, but because of morning sickness. “I did suggest the puking being connected to her pregnancy,” McDormand says. “I thought it would be funny.” (MGM DVD)

26. E.T.
In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982, dir. Steven Spielberg)

The wrinkly critter whose spaceship leaves him behind on Earth represents one of humanity’s dearest hopes: that there could be life out there besides us, and that it could be intelligent and good and adorably big-eyed. Everything from The Odyssey on teaches us that the need to go home is a deep human longing; E.T. teaches us it may be a universal one as well.

Defining Moment: As E.T. and Elliott (Henry Thomas) race to the forest, their bike is propelled into the night sky by E.T.’s powers. (Universal DVD)

25. Gordon Gekko
Played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street (1987, dir. Oliver Stone)

After Richard Gere and Warren Beatty considered the role of über-financier Gekko—a slicked-back symbol of Reagan-era excess—Michael Douglas, who was mostly being offered lightweight parts, jumped at the chance to play someone so ruthless. “[Gekko] has the beauty of a shark,” he says. “He’s just carnivorous. There’s no moral ambiguity or remorse whatsoever.” Maybe, but as Douglas adds, he still gets “half-drunk Wall Street investment bankers coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, man, you were the guy, greed is good.’ They look at me like I’m a folk hero, but I was supposed to be the bad guy. It’s a very sad comment.”

Defining Moment: Sad comment, but great bit—the “greed is good” speech that Gekko delivers before an audience of corporate stockholders is a show-stopper. Douglas’s assassin-like delivery and utter cockiness make turning away impossible. Unless, of course, you are Oliver Stone. “I always tease Oliver because he spent most of his time looking at the script to make sure I had it word perfect,” Douglas says. “He did a lot of provocations to make me that much nastier, tougher. And he was not afraid in the process to exert my hostilities toward him to get results. He watched me enough in the other takes, so I forgave him afterwards.” (Fox DVD)

24. The Little Tramp
Played by Charlie Chaplin in scores of films, beginning (makeup-wise, at least) with 1914’s Mabel's Strange Predicament

The bowler-hatted, Fuller Brush–mustached hobo has been so thoroughly dissected over the years that by now many film buffs have trouble seeing him as anything but an extension of his creator’s narcissism. For those less troubled by life and art correspondences, the image is iconic and the character a lovable fount of comic invention. Which is kind of odd, since most people don’t get all warm and cuddly over real-life bums. Which is what he is, let’s face it.

Defining Moment: The beatific smile at the end of City Lights. (Warner DVD)

23. Ethan Edwards
Played by John Wayne in The Searchers (1956, dir. John Ford)

He comes to visit his pioneer brother and his family in their new home, and the main thing everyone wonders about this mystery man is whether trouble has followed him out West. Trouble comes, but it’s got nothing to do with this former Reb; a Comanche raid leaves most of Edwards’s kin dead, and he sets off to find the two girls who’ve been kidnapped. A flat-out racist with a deep knowledge of Comanche culture, he’d rather see Lucy and Debbie dead than have the Comanches make them their own. Will he give up? As he would put it, “That’ll be the day.”

Defining Moment: When he chases after the terrified Debbie and you think he’s going to kill her and then . . . Oh, you just have to see it. (Warner DVD)

22. Travis Bickle
Played by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese)

Some see this querulous and off-putting figure as a token of urban alienation, others (frighteningly) as a kingpin of cool. But Bickle’s too slippery to be pinned down with a sociological explanation and too sick to be looked up to. He is, finally, a terrifying disconnect given human form, someone who thinks he’s figured out why he feels the way he does but can’t do anything to change it—someone who (as his porno-theater date with Cybill Shepherd’s faux-Madonna demonstrates) just does not get it.

Defining Moment: Everybody quotes the “You talkin’ to me?” massacre rehearsal, but the essence of Bickle is seen in the deadness of his eyes as he allows his small television set to crash to the floor after slowly rocking its stand (a fruit crate) with his boot. (Columbia TriStar DVD)

21. Susan Vance
Played by Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938, dir. Howard Hawks)

Can someone just throw David Huxley (Cary Grant) a bone? No, really. All the scientist wants is that last piece for his dinosaur and $1 million from a dinosaur of a dowager to support his museum. Then he can marry his uptight fiancée. Instead, he meets the irrepressible Susan, who annoys, embarrasses, and then, of course, captivates him. Susan is one of the first (and the best) of the Screen Savers, those screwball heroines who show their men the joy of escaping a dead-end job, a bitchy girlfriend, or the general ennui of life without, well, them.

Defining Moment: As they chase after an excruciatingly yappy terrier who has buried David’s prize bone, Susan exclaims, “Isn’t this fun, David? Just like a game.” Her face is filled with glee. We realize that life is a game to her—and that David should start playing as soon as possible. (Turner Home Video VHS)

20. Detective Virgil Tibbs
Played by Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night (1967, dir. Norman Jewison) and one later film

Made in the contradictory times when the Civil Rights Act was newly passed but so were the Watts riots, this Oscar-anointed drama hinges on proto-CSI detective Virgil Tibbs, stranded among the racist hicks of Sparta, Mississippi. His outrage is barely contained as he’s collared for a murder, then drafted into the investigation. He has no comment while every white cop around calls him “boy”; his steely glare and badge speak for him. Except once . . .

Defining Moment: When he tells the chief he’s got the wrong man, the chief sneers, “Virgil—that’s a funny name for a nigger boy from Philadelphia. What do they call you up there?” Unblinking,Virgil fires back, “They call me Mister Tibbs,” through clenched teeth. The indignation has echoed since. (MGM DVD)

19. Rick Blaine
Played by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942, dir. Michael Curtiz)

What separates Rick from other romantic male characters is that at the movie’s end, he doesn’t get the girl. But this is how he wants it. Well, not really—but he knows in his heart that his beloved Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman)’s staying with her husband is vital to winning the war. While Bogie wasn’t the studio’s first choice—George Raft was initially offered the part—his blend of tough-guy exterior and, as one character puts it, rank sentimentality gives Rick an air of street nobility, and lasting significance.

Defining Moment: After hearing of a young couple’s struggle to escape Casablanca, Rick allows the husband to win enough money at roulette to afford exit papers, and thereby spares the man’s wife from having to sleep with the shady Captain Renault, played by Claude Rains. (Warner DVD)

18. Carl Spackler
Played by Bill Murray in Caddyshack (1980, dir. Harold Ramis)

Was he stoned? Slow-witted? Suffering from too much Agent Orange? Who knows. But Murray’s insane, mumbled monologues cracked audiences up for the entire movie. His filthy, slack-jawed groundskeeper never did make sweet love to the grannies he stalked, nor could he kill that pesky dancing gopher. But thanks to a caddying gig with the Dalai Lama, he’ll still receive total consciousness on his deathbed. “So I got that going for me,” he says, “which is nice.”

Defining Moment: While “cannonballing” cheap wine and a Bob Marley–sized spliff with Chevy Chase’s Ty Webb, Spackler explains the benefits of the turf he invented, a cross between Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensimilla: “The amazing stuff about this is that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home, and just get stoned to the bejesus belt that night.” (Warner DVD)

17. Dorothy Gale
Played by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939, dir. Victor Fleming)

This sweetly naive Kansas farmgirl is the prototypical dreamy adolescent—L. Frank Baum’s nod to every kid who ever felt like he or she didn’t belong. Dorothy is lost and lonely on her aunt’s monochromatic farm, but she’s even more out of place in the strange land of Oz—where she’s used by a wizard and hunted by a witch. Suddenly, Kansas and Auntie Em’s
warm embrace seem like home after all. No flying monkeys, for one thing.

Defining Moment: When Dorothy sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” you can almost imagine a place where troubles melt like lemon drops. (Warner DVD)

16. Robin Hood
Played by Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, dirs. Michael Curtiz and William Keighley)

Smirk all you want about merry men and green tights—out of all the embodiments of derring-do played by Flynn, his nobleman–turned–defender-of-the-poor-and-oppressed is the most purely joyous. And his spirit lives on—check out Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and that tusker in the climactic battle of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Defining Moment: Crashing dinner with a dead deer on his back at Prince John’s place, inspiring the soon-to-be less-than-amused royal (Claude Rains) to call him “this saucy fellow.” (Warner DVD)

15. Hannibal Lecter
Played by Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs (1991, dir. Jonathan Demme) and two later films

Brian Cox in Manhunter is less effete, for sure, but his Lecter isn’t the one you hear people imitating all the time, now is it? Hopkins’s portrayal of the world’s most urbane serial killer is a wonder of both actorly invention (he adapted the voice in part from Katharine Hepburn, with whom he had worked on The Lion in Winter) and villainous instinct.

Defining Moment: Of course, the death rattle after “Chianti.” (MGM DVD)

14. Randle Patrick McMurphy
Played by Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, dir. Milos Forman)

Nicholson’s manic and slightly corrosive charm motors this study of one roistering inmate’s effect on an entire mental institution. A statutory rapist who fakes insanity to leave the prison farm for the mental ward, McMurphy confronts Louise Fletcher’s repellent Nurse Ratched with momentarily glorious but ultimately tragic results.

Defining Moment: A clandestine boat trip (“You’re not a goddamn loony now, boy, you’re a fisherman!”) is his bravura scene. (Warner DVD)

13. Atticus Finch
Played by Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, dir. Robert Mulligan)

Peck won an Oscar for his layered, level-headed portrayal of a southern lawyer who defends a black man accused of rape, in this adaptation of Harper Lee’s classic novel. But beloved, bespectacled Atticus is noble in more ways than one: Recently widowed, he is also the tender father of two scrappy rascals, Jem and Scout. Though he’s never patronizing, there’s still nothing or no one he can’t explain.

Defining Moment: “Do you know what a compromise is?” Finch asks Scout, after she gets into a fight at school. “It’s an agreement reached by mutual consent.” It’s also a perfect example of Atticus-the-lawyer and Atticus-the-father meeting halfway. (Universal DVD)

12. Charles Foster Kane
Played by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane (1941, dir. Orson Welles)

The essential paradox here is that this movie is about a group of people delving into the character of the title newspaper magnate—who remains essentially unknowable. Sure, he’s rich, powerful, ambitious, contrary . . . but what’s he really all about? The sentimental pull of “Rosebud” aside, the answer may be uglier than anybody really wants to know.

Defining Moment: As his second wife, Susan Alexander Kane, prepares to leave him, Kane checkmates himself by saying to her, “You can’t do this to me.” In one unguarded moment he reveals the solipsism that will doom him to die alone. (Warner DVD)

11. Margo Channing
Played by Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz)

This acid-tongued grande dame of the theatah gave us our first glimpse of malignant narcissism and neediness run amok—a phenomenon now referred to as the high-maintenance superstar. Ever vigilant to seize upon any perceived threat to her hegemony over the world’s affections and attention, Margo whips herself into a tantrum, alternately hurling barbs at her loyal supporters and bathing in her own bathos. And yet, for all her entitlement and self-destructive behavior, there’s something familiar and basic in her increasingly transparent desire to be loved despite, and not because of, her fame.

Defining Moment: When her jealous suspicions of her new acolyte boil over as party guests are scheduled to arrive, Margo concocts a brilliant mix of menace and self-mockery and lobs her legendary quip: “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” (Fox DVD)

10. Gollum
Played by Andy Serkis in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003, dir. Peter Jackson)

We loved him on the page: The slithering, tragicomical Gollum is one of the great creations of fantasy novelist J.R.R. Tolkien. But to launch this erstwhile hobbit, who has been corrupted by the evil ring, out of our imaginations and onto the big screen required a leap forward in film technology. And behold: the first truly realistic computer-generated creature with a character arc. Much credit goes to Serkis, whose reptilian body movements and hilariously pathetic voice infused the miserable miscreant with life—but props also to Jackson and his computer whizzes, who made us eager to watch Gollum’s every move and gasp at his deathly dance, which, finally, decides the fate of Middle-earth.

Defining Moment: When we first see Gollum in all his twisted, tortured glory, in 2002’s The Two Towers, he is wrestling with himself over whether to betray the hobbits. It’s a bipolar disorder of epic (and Oscar-worthy) proportions. (New Line DVD)

9. Jeff Spicoli
Played by Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, dir. Amy Heckerling)

“There’s always a jester character,” Heckerling says. “You know, the one who’s there to tweak noses: Bugs Bunny, Maynard G. Krebs.” And, of course, Jeff Spicoli, who made Mr. Hand’s life miserable in this coming-of-age comedy, adapted by Cameron Crowe from his book. Sean Penn played the quintessential stoner dude—whose name is now a part of the pop culture lexicon—with a little cosmetic help. “The character Cameron based Spicoli on had long salty hair and red eyes from smoking pot,” Heckerling says, “so Sean had a menthol irritant blown into his eyes to make them tear.” He also wore a wig, but the rest was pure Penn. “Sean grew up in Malibu,” Heckerling says, “and he brought in a lot of specific surfer vernacular: tubular, gnarly; it was just one new word after another.”

Defining Moment: All he needs are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, and . . . a pizza delivered to history class. Shocked, Mr. Hand asks, “Am I hallucinating here? Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” To which Spicoli replies, “Learning about Cuba and having some food.” (Universal DVD)

8. Ellen Ripley
Played by Sigourney Weaver in Alien (1979, dir. Ridley Scott) and three later films

Weaver’s Ripley revolutionized women’s roles by introducing the female action hero, the babe with brass balls and a stare as hard as granite. Indeed, she continually proves that she’s better suited than the guys at besting the aliens. Ironically, though, Ripley’s chief advantage turns out to be her well-developed maternal instinct, which lends her a touching poignancy and, more to the point, the fierce will to defend her own, whether it’s an orange Tabby named Jones or a little blond girl named Newt.

Defining Moment: Talk about nipping a problem in the bud. Early on in Alien, Tom Skerritt’s Captain Dallas orders Ripley to open the ship’s hatch so that a fallen comrade with a . . . thing attached to his face can be helped. Displaying the nervy good judgment that serves her well throughout, Ripley refuses, citing the welfare of the ship and crew. If only someone had listened. (Fox DVD)

7. Indiana Jones
Played by Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, dir. Steven Spielberg) and two later films

Named after producer George Lucas’s dog, Indy was a new kind of action hero. His academic background, fear of snakes, and difficulty communicating with his father helped audiences to relate to him. But it was Ford’s grizzled charm and vulnerability (both emotional and physical) that maintained the illusion that Indy was ordinary, even when he was outrunning gigantic boulders or Nazis.

Defining Moment: In Raiders’s brilliantly choreographed opening sequence, Indy overcomes several treacherous challenges to nab a priceless artifact, only to lose it to his nemesis René Belloq. Never has a hero appeared so courageous, obsessed, and cursed at the same time. (Paramount DVD)

6. Annie Hall
Played by Diane Keaton in Annie Hall (1977, dir. Woody Allen)

With her penchant for men’s clothing, Waspy Wisconsin upbringing, and maddening refrain of “la-di-da,” Manhattan transplant Annie is the perfect foil to Woody Allen/Alvy Singer’s Jewish New York City neurotic. While she’s often remembered for her ditsy innocence, it’s Annie’s darker side—she needs pot to enjoy sex and her shrink recommends five sessions a week—that gives her depth. But what makes us adore her is Keaton’s charm, unconventional beauty, and comedic timing.

Defining Moment: Now living in Los Angeles with a music producer (Paul Simon), Annie decides not to move back to New York and marry Alvy, who has flown in to plead his case. Though the setting of this exchange—a health food restaurant on Sunset Boulevard—is somewhat farcical, her newly discovered self-recognition is nothing to scoff at. (MGM DVD)

5. James Bond
Played by Sean Connery in Dr. No (1962, dir. Terence Young) and six later films

Every so often you hear about the actors and personalities Bond creator Ian Fleming envisioned as the ultimate secret agent—David Niven, Hoagy Carmichael—and every so often some (usually London-based) twit is heard to complain about Connery’s Scots burr. But seriously, the Connery Bond is the only one who behaves as if there’s more at stake in any given situation than the crease in his tuxedo pants.

Defining Moment: His remark to the doomed Professor Dent (Anthony Dawson), “You’ve had your six” (as in shots). Only Connery understood that, suaveness aside, Bond was a real cold sonofabitch. (MGM DVD)

4. Norman Bates
Played by Anthony Perkins in Psycho (1960, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) and, alas, three ill-advised sequels

Western culture’s most perverted totem of mother love is also the most sympathetic serial killer ever filmed. His overeager smiles, enigmatic tics, and hair-trigger defensiveness—all given eerie life by the beautiful but (appropriately) gawky Perkins (who rebelled against becoming a teen idol by taking this role)—are now part of the lexicon of neurosis/psychosis. But what haunts us about Norman can’t be explained away by the textbook Freud that rears its hilarious head at the movie’s end.

Defining Moment: His speech after future victim Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) suggests that his mother be put “somewhere,” in which the real rage he’s incapable of incorporating into his personality makes a brief, stunning appearance. (Universal DVD)

3. Scarlett O’Hara
Played by Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind (1939, dir. Victor Fleming)

As God is our witness, she’s no lady, and that’s what we like about her—that she can claw her way back from poverty and starvation. The electric force of Leigh’s performance somehow reconciles Scarlett’s selfish vanity, stubborn passion, and steely determination. It doesn’t hurt that she has a sparring partner equal to the task in Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler, both of them prideful, mulish, and quite uncivilized when it comes to each other.

Defining Moment: More important even than the war between North and South is the battle between Scarlett’s pride and her passion. After her second husband has expired, Rhett proposes grandly, mocking her up until she scorns him. Then his kiss throws all thought of drippy Ashley Wilkes out of her mind. (MGM DVD)

2. Fred C. Dobbs
Played by Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, dir. John Huston)

The screen’s greatest paranoid, Dobbs is a “down on his luck” laborer bumming around Mexico who teams up with fellow vagabond Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) to go gold prospecting with grizzled mining veteran Howard (Walter Huston). They hike, they dig, they dream. Harold reckons he can retire with ten grand. “Why sure,” Dobbs scoffs. “You’re old. I’m young. I need dough, and plenty of it.” With that, he begins a disintegration that remained unmatched in American culture until the Nixon presidency.

Defining Moment: After a Gila monster runs beneath the rock that is hiding Dobbs’s gold, Curtin makes to overturn the rock, which makes Dobbs, unaware of the Gila monster, go predictably ballistic. Curtin explains; Dobbs doesn’t buy it; Curtin challenges Dobbs to put his hand under the rock. Here Bogart runs the gamut of every unpleasant or dishonorable emotion imaginable—and you never see him acting. (Warner DVD)

1. Vito Corleone
Played by Marlon Brando in The Godfather (1972, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

With squinty eyes and drooping cheeks, this patriarch’s face seems to be one sad sag; it is, in fact, an impassive mask for a quick mind and a fierce ethos. His talent is for crime, but his passion is for his family. He seems to carry with him a latent sense of tragedy, and as the film continues, that sense manifests itself more and more as Vito realizes that the things he did to protect his family sowed the seeds of its destruction. The most complex mobster ever portrayed onscreen.

Defining Moment: After slapping around cream puff crooner Johnny Fontane with the admonishment “be a man,” Vito tells him, “You look terrible. I want you to eat. I want you to rest well and in a month this Hollywood big shot’s gonna give you what you want.” Ever the wimp, Fontane protests, “Too late, they start shooting in a week.” Vito is unperturbed: “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” (Paramount DVD)