Top Ten Badass Movie Villains Who Were Also in Broadway Musicals
Introduction
Many people would
agree that movie heroes are only as good as the villains that they face. After all what is James Bond without
Goldfinger, or Superman without Lex Luthor, or Sherlock Holmes without
Professor Moriarity? Great movie
villains are smart, devious, sometimes charming and above all, ruthless. They can devise plots to hold entire cities
hostage, destroy millions, or best of all, devise overly elaborate death
devises for their good guy counterparts.
However badass movie villains never sing or dance. Or do they?
Sometimes the same actors who send chills down our spines as they plot
to overthrow the world or stalk an unsuspecting victim, also wow us on the
Broadway stage with their singing and dancing talents.
10) Alfred Molina – Molina
started out as a bad guy. For those of
you who don’t know, he played Satipo (in his film debut), the questionable
partner of Indiana Jones who steals the idol from Jones (throw me the idol and
I’ll throw you the whip), only to be skewered by a wall of spears. After that his villain roles moved up the
ladder as he played the nemesis to Mel Gibson’s Maverick and then finally as
the tragic scientist turned mad scientist Doctor Otto Octavius (Doc Ock) in the
second Spider-man movie. He also threw
in roles as the evil Horvath in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the equally evil
Sheik Amar in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. But Molina has a softer side as well. He starred on Broadway as Tevya the man who
dreams of being rich in the classic musical Fiddler on the Roof, for which he
was nominated for a Tony.
Coincidentally, one of the Easter eggs on the DVD of Spider-man 2 shows
Molina (as Doc Ock) singing a song from Fiddler on the Roof (he was performing
in the play on Broadway at the same time he was filming the movie).
9) Anthony Perkins – Perkins
played so many movie villains that you get creeped out just by seeing him show
up on the screen. Of course his most
famous bad guy role is the slasher with the Oedipus complex Norman Bates from
the movie Psycho and its three ill-conceived sequels. But he also played one of the possible guilty
members in Murder on the Orient Express, as well as the terrorists who faces
off against Roger Moore (who was in between Bond movies) in Ffolkes. But Perkins was also a stage actor and was in
several Broadway plays during the 1960’s and 70’s, even winning a Tony for his
lead role in Tea and Sympathy. His only
Broadway musical role was the lead in Greenwillow. Interestingly, according to Perkins himself,
he was not able to film the infamous shower scene in Psycho because he was
rehearsing for Greenwillow in New York at the time and they had to use his
stand in.
8) Margaret Hamilton – The name Margaret Hamilton might not be
immediately familiar, but her duel role of Elmira Gulch and The Wicked Witch of
the West in the classic Wizard of Oz is unforgettable. There are very few people in the US who
didn’t hide under the blankets as children when Hamilton threatened Dorothy
Gale (and her little dog too).
Ironically, the actress who would scare so many children over many
decades started out as a kindergarten teacher and deeply loved children. But in addition to being the source of so many
nightmares, she did her time on the Broadway stage, including the Musicals
Goldilocks and Come summer.
7) John Lithgow –
Lithgow is probably best known for his role as Dr. Dick Solomon on the TV
series 3rd Rock from the Sun.
He has also been in many comedies and dramas on the big screen as well
as the small screen. However, he has
also played the badass villain, Eric Qualen who tries to freeze, shoot, blow-up
and drown one of the biggest badass action heroes, Sylvester Stallone in
Cliffhanger. In addition he played the
mad scientist (always a staple for badass movie villains) Dr. Emilio
Lizardo/Lord John Whorfin in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th
Dimension. He also played the less
badass, but still really mean, Lord Farquaad in the animated feature
Shrek. But Lithgow has spent a lot of
time on the Broadway stage as well. He
received a Tony award for Best Actor in a Musical for Sweet Smell of success
and then was nominated for another Tony for the musical version of Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels. Despite its title, he
doesn’t really play a villain in that one, just a bumbling con artist.
6) Morgan Freeman
– While Freeman is generally best known for playing
good guys. Case in point, he’s played
the president of the United States and God (twice). He’s also played a wide variety of dramatic
roles in The Shawshank Redemption, Driving Miss Daisy and more recently, Lucius
Fox, the friend and ally to Bruce Wayne/Batman.
But his first big break in movies was as the chilling, ruthless pimp,
Fast Black in Street Smart. He has also
played the evil badass leader of a group of super assassins in Wanted. But in his early years, Freeman sang and
danced across the Broadway stage in musicals like Hello Dolly! and Purlie. Of course Freeman’s singing and dancing
skills should be of no surprise to those who grew up watching him as Easy
Reader, the ultra-cool advocate of literacy on the PBS children’s show Electric
Company.
5) Ricardo Montalban
– One word…. Khaaaaaan! Yes, Montalban
forever cemented a place for himself in the badass villain hall of fame as the
genetically superior Khan Noonien Singh. Montalban reprised his role from the
original Star Trek series to return with a vengeance in Star Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan. A few years later Montalban
played another, less serious villain in the first Police Squad movie as the
nefarious Vincent Ludwig. But Montalban
had a long and distinguished career, even before his most famous role as the
mysterious Mr. Roarke on TV’s Fantasy Island.
His career included numerous appearances on the small and big
screens. He also starred in two Broadway
musicals in the 1950’s, Seventh Heaven and Jamaica, for which he received a
Tony nomination for Best Actor in a Musical.
4) Bob Gunton – While
Gunton has played a variety of roles in both movies and television, he is
probably best known for his role as the evil, vindictive Warden Norton in The
Shawshank Redemption. He also played bad
guy Pritchett (who gets taken out by the even bigger bad guy John Travolta) in
Broken Arrow. One of the things that
makes Gunton such a great villain is his smile.
He can smile like he’s your best friend and all the time he is planning
on throwing you in a pit or ready to push you off a cliff. Certainly he has had his share of nice guy
roles. He played Franklin Roosevelt in
the made-for-TV movie World War Two: Behind Closed Doors. But then again he also played Richard Nixon
in the made-for-TV movie Elvis Meets Nixon, so I guess that would be a toss
up. But Gunton also has numerous
Broadway musicals to his credit, including Evita (Tony nomination for Best
Actor), Big River (Tony nomination for Best Actor) and the Broadway revival of
Sweeny Todd for which he received another Tony nomination for Best Actor as the
demon barber himself. Even Broadway
knows a badass villain when they see one.
3) Bela Lugosi –One
could make the argument that Lugosi’s Dracula set the bar for the badass movie
villain. He is charming, sophisticated,
he speaks with a foreign accent, he’s pure evil, he has great lines, “I never
drink…wine.”; “Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make.”, and
he has his own frigging castle. He gets
the heroine (for a while anyway) and he fights the hero to the death. Of course Lugosi made many movies, both
before and after Dracula, but this was undoubtedly his crowning
achievement. What many may not know is
that he was actually reprising the role that he had played in the Broadway
version of Dracula and no, it wasn’t a musical.
But he did go back to Broadway in 1933 to star in the musical Murder at
the Vanities. They also made a movie
version but Lugosi did not reprise his role on the big screen for that one.
2) Glenn Close –
This six time Oscar nominated actress has played a wide variety of roles over
her illustrious career. Many of those
roles have been as a sweet hometown girl next door, as in The Natural. But then there is Fatal Attraction. The movie that convinced a whole generation
of men not to have a one night fling and none of us will ever look at a pet
bunny in the same way. As the seductress/stalker
Alex Foster, Close had those qualities that make movie villains work. She had charm, good looks and evil right down
to her bones. In fact, she was so convincing
that she was nominated for an Academy award for Best Actress for that
role. Later Close returned as the
classic, although less serious villain, Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmations (and
its sequel 102 Dalmations). Anyone who
has Devil as a last name you know is bad.
But her acting skills are not limited to the big screen. She has been in numerous Broadway productions
including the musicals Barnum and Sunset Boulevard for which she won a Tony
award for Best Actress in a Musical.
1) Tim Curry – What
can you say about Tim Curry? He has the
perfect look for a badass movie villain.
With his beguiling smile, smooth voice and perfect laugh he has played
countless movie villains throughout his career.
From the butler Wadsworth in the movie adaption of the board game Clue
(who may or may not have been guilty, depending on which version you watched), to
the evil Farley Claymore in The Shadow, to the devious Cardinal Richelieu in
The Three Musketeers Curry has played virtually every kind of movie villain out
there. Not only that, but in the
animated television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars he was the voice of
Chancellor Palpatine (Darth Sidius). It
doesn’t get any more evil than that. Of
course Curry’s most famous role has to be the evil mad scientist Frank-N-Furter
in the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. What many people may not know is that movie
was actually the movie version of the Broadway musical The Rocky Horror Show
which also featured Curry in the starring role.
Additionally, Curry starred in the Broadway musicals My Favorite Year
and Spamalot. Both of which earned him
Tony award nominations for Best Actor in a Musical.
