Category: top 100 characters
played by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon A man with a perverse sense of honor, Sam Spade has no qualms about sleeping with his business partner’s wife, but will also stop at nothing to bring said partner’s killer to...
played by Reese Witherspoon in Election She doesn’t kill anybody. She doesn’t tie anybody to the railroad tracks. She doesn’t even sit in a leather chair and pet a white cat. Yet, somehow, high schooler Tracy Flick is one of...
played by George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Buck Turgidson, played with total commitment by George C. Scott, is a testament to the absurdity of the military. His absolute...
played by Sylvester Stallone in Rocky He’s dumb, he’s tactless, and he’s violent. So why do we love Rocky Balboa so much? Because he knows what he is, but he also knows there’s something more. If he only had the...
played by Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull Jake LaMotta does not represent us all. He’s not even terribly sympathetic. The fact is, he’s on the list because there’s just no one else like him, certainly not the way Robert DeNiro...
played by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood Ambition is considered such a perfectly American trait that we rarely stop to consider that it may not be such a good thing. Daniel Plainview is the type of person one...
played by Gary Cooper in High Noon In the midst of the McCarthy Era, it took courage for a man to take a stand for what was right, especially when his few close friends refuse to stand with him. Will...
played by Jean-Pierre Leaud in The 400 Blows Antoine Doinel was a recurring stand-in for his creator, Francois Truffaut. How can he help but be a fantastic character when he is the celluloid reflection of such a fantastic filmmaker?
played by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s As outrageous as she seems to young, suburban eyes, I have since known women like Holly Golightly. Those who don’t know her well will pity her if they don’t dismiss her out...
played by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein More often than not, horror films represent the scares of conservatives. Out of control teenagers, the dangers of unchecked lust, etc. Frankenstein’s monster, on the other hand, is the liberal’s horror villain. He is...
