20 Most Noteworthy Villains (Part 1)

Most of us love to hate them, while some hate to love them, but when it comes down to it, these guys–and gals, are just plain bad. Here’s my collection of the top 20 baddest in the business up-to-date.

20. Jeffrey Jones as Ed Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

He’s tall. He’s scary. And he’s a ginger. Principal Rooney spends the entire circulation of FBDO trying to catch Ferris in the act of playing hookie just so that he can mark his permananet record and hold him back a year. The man goes so far as to leave the school just to get a glimpse of the kid and his posse, always two steps behind. Ending with a race of epic proportions, Ferris beats his parents home in time, but not before having to face both his sister and Principal Rooney. Lucky for Ferris, Jeanie has a change of heart and plays everything off before handing Rooney the wallet he left in the Bueller’s home earlier on from breaking in. One way or the other, this leads poor ol’ Rooney to get mauled by the family’s dog and finally get what he deserves. It’s no mystery that this guy hates no one more than he hates Ferris Beuller, and there’s just something about a man who’s out to ruin all the fun that makes teens everywhere squirm.

19. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

These notorious villains, whether we’re talking the real or the fictitious, are the real deal. Dunaway plays Bonnie Parker, a small town nobody until the dreamy Clyde Barrow walks into the diner she works at and takes her for a ride that’ll change her life forever. She joins the Barrow Gang and has a side affair with Clyde himself up until their deaths in 1934. While in the movie Warren Beatty plays off their criminality as nothing more than getting the money they’re both more than well entitled to, we all know this isn’t the case. Bonnie and Clyde committed their fair share of murders, and simply put in the words of Faye Dunaway, “We rob banks.”

18. Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas (1990)

Tommy DeVito is one of the most mentally unstable people I’ve ever seen on screen. His character is based on Thomas DeSimone, a friend of the real Henry Hill. As a man who likes to shoot people in the foot because, you know, he feels like it, he isn’t exactly a reasonable person. Excessively violent, – mobster: expected – remarkably annoying, and uncannily a wisecracker, he isn’t one of the more liked villain’s on this list, either. Starring in my all-time favorite movie ever, he plays the biggest asshole who’s ever walked the face of the earth. I hate him. I hate him. I hate him. And I hate him. And this is in no way helping me to prove my point that he is a villain, but I just can’t help myself. While Goodfellas is, in fact, a mobster movie, technically making everyone in the film a villain of sorts, DeVito’s assholery just skyrockets above the rest. On a brighter note, though, Robert De Niro is just amazing in this movie.

17.  Bryce Dallas Howard as Hilly Holbrook in The Help (2011)

Oh, Hilly, Hilly, Hilly, what is there to like about this particular Southerner? Virtually, nothing. Trying to sabotage Skeeter’s book plan and just about everything else: not cool. Her attitude towards life and the way she treats those around her, including her mother, is absolutely disgraceful. The fact that Hilly manages to hide how evil a person she is under all that hair upsets the crowds more than anything, and when Octavia Spencer’s character gives her that special chocolate pie as a gift? Enough said. World. Made.

16. Margaret Hamilton as The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939)

15. Ian McKellen as Magneto in X-men(2000)

McKellen gave us a villain none of us were ever able to relate with, or quite possibly understand for quite some time. Before handing over the role to Michael Fassbender, the ever-so-great, so that he may take on Eric Lensherr in his earlier days, we knew some, but not all, of Magneto’s dark past. Magneto has, for the most part, just been a badass villain with awesome steel bending abilities and an ultra cool helmet to go along with it, but when Michael came along, a whole new level of sympathizing with the bad guy erupted from within my heart. If this was the Most-Sympathized-With-Villains-Of-All-Time list, Magneto would probably make my number one. All I’m sayin’. With or without the backstory, though, Magneto is evil through and through, and for that, we thank him.