tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

This list was inspired by some of the most recent female villains portrayed on the big screen - in particular Mo'Nique, the lazy, vile and selfish mother to Gabby Sidibe's character in Precious and Cate Blanchett who played the brilliant and nasty Irina Spalko out to spoil the adventures of Indiana Jones in the latest sequel of the popular adventure series.

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While some of the most memorable female villains are portrayed as ugly, unfashionable monsters, there are a good number of characters who are evil but also beautiful and fabulous. Some would even rival the female leads in terms of beauty, fashion and style thus we have this list.

Take a closer look right after the jump, I'm pretty sure, you'll agree with the names on the list...
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# 10 - Akasha in The Queen of the Damned played by Aaliyah- Akasha is a fictional character from Anne Rice's The Vampire Chronicles. She is the queen of all vampires, and is the most powerful. She is very arrogant and a relentless destroyer of lives.

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R&B artist Aaliyah played Akasha on the big screen, but the famous singer died in a plane crash before the film was released. Dressed in very revealing Egyptian-inspired costumes, Akasha maybe out to rule the world and kill everyone on her path, but she did it with finesse. Definitely both evil and fab!

You can watch the trailer of Queen of the Damned below:

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# 9 - Suzanne Stone Maretto in To Die For played by Nicole Kidman - Ambitious, headstrong, calculating cold-blooded murderer, that's Suzanne Stone Maretto - a dreamer, with limited intellect, who believes she can become a news anchor on TV. She even seduced her student in order to kill her husband.

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Katherine Ramsland of Crime Library describes the film as an example of a work displaying women with antisocial traits; Ramsland describes Suzanne as a "manipulator extraordinaire" who harms people through third parties. In her review in the New York Times, Janet Maslin called the film "an irresistible black comedy and a wicked delight" and added, "[it] takes aim at tabloid ethics and hits a solid bull's-eye, with Ms. Kidman's teasingly beautiful Suzanne as the most alluring of media-mad monsters. The target is broad, but Gus Van Sant's film is too expertly sharp and funny for that to matter; instead, it shows off this director's slyness better than any of his work since Drugstore Cowboy . . . Both Mr. Van Sant and Ms. Kidman have reinvented themselves miraculously for this occasion, which brings out the best in all concerned."

Watch this clip featuring Kidman seducing Joaquin Phoenix:

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# 8 - Karen Crowder in Michael Clayton played by Tilda Swinton - Karen Crowder is the ambitious, manipulative general counsel of a big Corporation called U North, who is willing to kill to save her company from a class suit. An online magazine called her a carnivorous lawyer. Swinton won the Oscar Best Supporting Actress for her role.

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Swinton was asked if she felt any sympathy for her character:

You know it's hard to imagine a human being whom one can't find some sympathy for. But I'm not a performer who needs to love my characters or whatever they say. That's not an issue for me. I mean all a character is, is a set of behaviours and a set of actions so you can pick up the story. I think that she has looked at a lot of photographs of Condoleezza Rice and probably took a photograph of her into the hairdresser in the Hilton Hotel in Manhattan at the very end of the film when she's putting together her power look and said 'I want that one'. You know, she's an officer, a solider and she wears a uniform. And women in those jobs unashamedly conform to a type. They have to, because you can virtually get sacked for wearing the wrong shoes in that kind of world. So I walked around uptown New York and looked into various offices and saw what the vibe was. [ read more ]

Watch the trailer of Michael Clayton below:

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# 7 - Katharine Parker in Working Girl played by Sigourney Weaver - Weaver is one of the most versatile actresses ever and she played a good number of evil characters on the big screen - in Holes, she's the evil jail warden and in Snow White: A Tale of Terror, she was equally evil, but as the ambitious Boss Katharine Parker assisted by a more intelligent and innovative secretary (Melanie Griffth), she was deliciously wicked, evil and sexy all at the same time. For her performance, she was nominated for an Oscar Best Supporting Actress.

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Watch the trailer of Working Girl below:

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# 6 - Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct played by Sharon Stone - Beautiful, confident and quite fashionable but a cold-blooded killer, and a lesbian too! Catherine Trammel will do anything, without any regard to anyone. From Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoven, this erotic thriller/neo-noir film features Sharon Stone as Trammel and her take on the character is both chilling and sensual, on the verge of the erotic.

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Australian critic Shannon J. Harvey of the Sunday Times called it one of the "1990s finest productions, doing more for female empowerment than any feminist rally. Stone - in her star-making performance - is as hot and sexy as she is ice-pick cold". The trailer for Basic Instinct is below:

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# 5 - Madison Lee in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle played by Demi Moore - Moore played two considerable roles as villain - the other one as Meredith Johnson in Disclosure, the movie adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel. While her performance in Disclosure was quite impressive, her performance in the Charlie's Angel sequel is so notable for the fact that she was out of the spotlight for many years, and her return to the big screen via Charlie's Angels proved she can return to acting on her own terms.

Madison Lee is a talented, aggressive superagent who turned her back on her fellow angels, and said: Why be an Angel, when [she] can be God!

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Watch some selected scenes from the movie, featuring Moore and Cameron Diaz:

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# 4 - Miranda Priestley in The Devil Wears Prada played by Meryl Streep - Fashionably chic, but very cruel, especially to her staff, Miranda Priestley is a top fashion editor who commands the attention of the fashion industry. Priestley's character is reported to be based on Anna Wintour, the legendary and controversial Vogue editor.

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Streep's performance drew rave reviews from critics and later earned her many award nominations, including her record-setting 14th Oscar bid, as well as a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical. Watch the trailer below:

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# 3 - Elle Driver in Kill Bill (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) played by Daryl Hannah - Also known as California Mountain Snake, Elle is described as greedy and sadistic. She lost one of her eye when she showed disrespect to one old and respected trainor of the martial arts, Pai Mei and he plucked out her right eye. Her one-eye patch gives her a distinctive yet notorious appeal.

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Says Hanah of her preparation for the role in Tarantino's blockbuster:

Yeah, I have an athletic disposition. Not that I don't keep it up, but I have that disposition so it was definitely helpful. I learned all that stuff pretty fast and, of course, I loved it too. I would sit there and wait for the fight team [on Kill Bill] to be finished with everyone else, and then 'Can I get back on the wires?' 'Okay, one more flip.' Because I just think it's fun. You get to fly, you know? It was fun. [ read more ]

You can watch the clip featuring the fight scene between The Bride (Uma Thurman) and Elle Driver (Hannah):

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The top 2 places - A manipulative Marquise and a deranged Editor were portrayed by only one actress - Glenn Close. Who gets to be at #1 depends ultimately on her evil deeds. Close was also superb as Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians.

# 2 - Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons played by Glenn Close - A conniving, manipulative French countess who, together with the Vicomte de Valmont, use sex as a weapon of humiliation and degradation, all the while enjoying their cruel games.

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While she did not win the Oscar Best Actress, Glenn Close received considerable praise for her performance; she was lauded by the New York Times for her "richness and comic delicacy," while Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that, once she "finally lets loose and gives way to complete animal despair, Close is horrifying."

Watch the trailer featuring some great scenes with Glenn Close below:

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# 1 - Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction played by Glenn Close - Forrest is a mentally unstable editor who became obssessed with Daniel Gallagher, a successful, happily married New York attorney, whom she had a brief affair. Unable to accept that it was only a fling, Forrest went on a rampage and terrorized Gallagher and his family.

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This is definitely one of Glenn Close's best performances. With her signature frizzy hair, and that stylish white suite, she appears as a very attractive and intelligent business woman, but is really a suicidal and profoundly psychotic individual. Close was also nominated for the Oscar Best Actress for this film.

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The film's character (Forrest) has been discussed by psychiatrists and film experts, and has been used as a film illustration for the condition erotomania. As referenced in Orit Kamirs' Every Breath You Take: Stalking Narratives and the Law, "Glenn Close's character Alex is quite deliberately made to be an erotomaniac".

Gelder reports that Glenn Close, "consulted three separate shrinks for an inner profile of her character, who is meant to be suffering from a form of obsessive condition known as de Clérambault's syndrome (Gelder 1990, 93 - 94)". It is also noted she displays characteristics of a psychiatric condition known as borderline personality disorder. The character displays the behaviors of impulsivity, emotional lability, fear of abandonment, idealization/devaluation and self-mutilation consistent with the diagnosis, although generally aggression to the self rather than others is a more usual feature in borderline personality disorder.

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What's on your mind? Do you agree with this list? Do you have other names of actresses who played an evil and fabulous villain on the big screen? Let us know what you think!
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