Great Movie Characters

[nikkuchan]

I was thinking about some of the movies I watched recently, and I began to think about the rare occurances where a single character that is so good, that character alone makes the movie worth watching. A good movie is a good movie no matter what, but we still know that without these amazing performances the film just wouldn't be nearly what it is without them (and sometimes a character is responsible for making an otherwise bad or mediocre movie worth a viewing). I'm not talking about just good performances; I'm talking about show-stealing ones. What movie characters do you love to see?

I'll begin by naming a few of my favorites:

Bill The Butcher (by Daniel Day-Lewis) from Gangs of New York
Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Pirates of the Caribbean
G. H. Dorr (Tom Hanks) from The Ladykillers

 

[Spade]

I was thinking about some of the movies I watched recently, and I began to think about the rare occurances where a single character that is so good, that character alone makes the movie worth watching. A good movie is a good movie no matter what, but we still know that without these amazing performances the film just wouldn't be nearly what it is without them (and sometimes a character is responsible for making an otherwise bad or mediocre movie worth a viewing). I'm not talking about just good performances; I'm talking about show-stealing ones. What movie characters do you love to see?

I'll begin by naming a few of my favorites:

Bill The Butcher (by Daniel Day-Lewis) from Gangs of New York
Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Pirates of the Caribbean
G. H. Dorr (Tom Hanks) from The Ladykillers

Vito and Michael Corleone - The Godfather NO1 movie of the world
Ace Rothstein, Nicky Santoro - Casino
Darth Maul - Star Wars
Robert De Niro - Face to Face
Shrek - Shrek

 

[adonnellyr]

+1 on Bill the Butcher.

And I'll throw in:
Peter Gibbons from Office Space.
Charlie Meadows (AKA Madman Mundt) in Barton Fink.
Ben Braddock in The Graduate.

I don't think any of those movies are bad or even really mediocre (well, Office Space maybe), but those are a few characters I really like regardless of film quality.

 

[mdunn]

dont forget Dirty Harry!

 

[JimBow]

Darth Vader- Star Wars 4-6
Riddick- Pitch Black
The Joker- Batman (1989)
Doc Brown- BTTF 1-3 (not a bad set of movies, but may favorite character anyway!)
The Punisher- (2004)

 

[porterhaus]

Patton - (George C. Scott)

 

[rm71]

Ferris Bueller
The Terminator
Ellen Ripley- Aliens

 

[Henrique]

Frank Mackey (Tom Cruise) in Magnolia.

I'm not a fan, but after 10 seconds i wispered to my wife "this is gonna to be great"

 

[Johnny Dale]

Ward Bond as Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnston Clayton in the film "The Searchers".

I have always felt that John Wayne should have won an Oscar for his performance in that film. One of my favorites.

 

[curtis909]

errol flynn - robin hood
daniel day lewis - there will be blood
tom hanks - forrest gump
al pacino - dog day afternoon

 

[jazzman]

Cool Hand Luke

 

[slcsteve]

I started a small list but it grew longer by the minute. So I googled "greatest movie roles" and found this list. I know that I took the easy route but here it is anyway:

http://www.cinema.com/news/item/6975/100-greatest-movie-roles.phtml

 

[Gogo]

Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction among others.

 

[Dustinl]

My favorite: Dwight Yokum as Doyle Hardgraves in Sling Blade.

Other good ones:

Daniel Day Lewis- There Will Be Blood
Mickey Rourke- Sin City
Robert Duval- Apocolypse Now and Lonesome Dove
Tommy Lee Jones- Lonesome Dove


DL

 

[HCSchluge]

Oddball (Donald Sutherland) in Kelly's Heros

 

[ouch]

I started a small list but it grew longer by the minute. So I googled "greatest movie roles" and found this list. I know that I took the easy route but here it is anyway:

http://www.cinema.com/news/item/6975/100-greatest-movie-roles.phtml

Thanks for the link, Steve. As with any list (eg: top 100 songs, guitarists, etc.) there will always be glaring errors and omissions. Here's my take- it's hard to take seriously a list that has Carl Spackler and Navin Johnson before Alex DeLarge.

 

[DunEdinRanger]

Tough question...

Harvey Korman in Blazing Saddles and History of the World

Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Kenneth Mars in The Producers. Together, they exceeded the sum of their parts.

Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein.

 

[SRock]

Bruce Lee in anything!

 

[Walter Sobchak]

Wow, this is tough. So many great performances in the last hundred years. I'm going to pick at random.

Frances McDormand in Fargo.

Ed Norton in American History X.

Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast.

 

[kwk285]

Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber
Tim Robbins ans Andy Dufraine
Bill Murray as Carl Spackler