My Worst Movie Moms List

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23.

Evil Stepmother, Cinderella



When her husband died, it was his wish that this woman always care for his daughter, Cinderella. Since his will was not specific about how to care for Cinderella, she turned Cinderella into a slave and made her wait hand and foot on her and her two ugly biological daughters.



22.

Ruth, She-Devil



Ruth (Roseanne) is a married mother of two who finds out that her husband (Ed Begley Jr.) is having an affair with a famous romance novelist (Meryl Streep) so she throws him out of the house and burns her house to the ground and sends her children to live with their father and their new stepmother. I understand Ruth's bitterness about her husband, but to destroy the home that her children grew up in just to spite her husband, was wrong.



21.

Alice Ward, The Fighter



Melissa Leo makes a second appearance on the list in her Oscar winning performance as the hard-nosed mother of a second rate prize fighter (Mark Wahlberg) and his drug addict older brother (Oscar winner Christian Bale).



20.

Mrs. Boucher, The Waterboy



Kathy Bates was hysterical as the over possessive mother of Bobby Boucher (Adam Sandler) who has never gotten over her husband leaving her and has spent Bobby's whole life making him pay for it.



19.

Gothel, Tangled



Gothel (Voiced by Donna Murphy) adopted Princess Rapunzel because of a healing flower that was used to restore her health...well, not so much adopted but kidnapped. When he learned the flower was in Rapunzel's hair, she locked the girl in a tower and refused to let her cut her hair.



I think Joan Crawford ( whether played by Faye Dunaway or starring as herself in her own life) should be # 1 .

And I hate to remember Mary Tyler Moore in this role, but would also expect to see Ordinary People up here too.



I think Joan Crawford ( whether played by Faye Dunaway or starring as herself in her own life) should be # 1 .

And I hate to remember Mary Tyler Moore in this role, but would also expect to see Ordinary People up here too.
Still too early in this list for Joan Crawford or Mary Tyler Moore



18.

Rose Hovick, Gypsy



Arguably, the greatest female character in musical comedy history, it doesn't change the fact that this woman is a bad mother. Obsessed with living out her own show business aspirations through her children, Rose Hovick (Rosalind Russell) shoved her children onto vaudeville stages instead of allowing them to go to school like regular children. She treated them like toddlers their whole lives to the point where June (Ann Jillian) and Louise (Natalie Wood) were never exactly sure how old they were. Rose was such a good mother that June eventually ran away and got married while Rose pushed Louise, who Rose always claimed had no talent, onto a burlesque stage to perform a striptease, eventually turning Louise into the legendary Gypsy Rose Lee, who became such a big star she didn't need her mother anymore. Karma is a bitch.



17.

Mrs. Taggart, The Anniversary



Bette Davis played one of her most bizarre characters as an eccentric widow who is more interested in celebrating the anniversary of her marriage to her dead husband than she is in being a mother to the three sons she makes jump through hoops.



16.

Violet Venable, Suddenly Last Summer



Despite the fact that her son is already dead at the beginning of the film, Violet Venable is still a horrible mother. Mrs. Venable (Katharine Hepburn) has always been in denial and a little ashamed of who her son, Sebastian, was while he was alive, but praised him to the heavens as the greatest son ever. When Mrs. Venable learns that her mentally unbalanced niece, Catherine (Elizabeth Taylor) is aware of who Sebastian was and how he died, she offers an insane amount of money to a surgeon (Montgomery Clift) to perform an experimental operation on her called a lobotomy to silence her.



15.

Ma Kettle, The Egg and I



Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride were s funny as the Kettles in this movie that they were spun off into nine more films, but Ma was still a questionable mother...she couldn't even remember the names of her 12 children.



14.

Lucy Harbin, Strait Jacket



Lucy (Joan Crawford) caught her husband and his mistress in bed together and murdered both of them with an ax right in front of her daughter (Diane Baker) and spent 20 years in a mental institution for the crime. Upon her release, she moves back in with her daughter and during a meeting of her daughter's new boyfriend, gets drunk and tries to seduce him.



13.

Helene McCready, Gone Baby Gone



Amy Ryan received an Oscar nomination for breathing life into this truly detestable movie mom. Helene is a drug addict who works as a drug mule in order to support her habit. When her daughter, 6 year old Amanda, goes missing, her grandparents hire a pair of detectives (Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan) to find her. When the detectives go to Helene to question her about her daughter's disappearance, the woman doesn't really seem to care.



12.

Norma, Hannah and her Sisters



Norma (Maureen O'Sulivan) neglected her three daughters when they were growing up because she was too busy working at an acting career that never really came to be. She now neglects them as adults because she's too busy drinking. One of Norma's daughters is played by O'Sullivan's real life daughter, Mia Farrow.



11.

Lilly Dillon, The Grifters



Angelica Huston received an Oscar nomination for her icy performance as a professional grifter whose almost incestuous relationship with her son, Roy (John Cusack) actually drives her to plan the murder of his girlfriend (Oscar nominee Annette Bening). This woman redefines "cold."



10.

Joan Crawford, Mommie Dearest



I debated long and hard whether or not include this character on the list for a couple of reasons. Primarily, this character is based on a real person, but the character in this movie is seen through the very subjective eyes of her adopted daughter, Christina. Christina's view of her mother was very exaggerated and may have not been a true picture of the late actress, but this thread is about bad movie moms and strictly from that viewpoint, there's no way I could not include her on this list. According to this movie, Crawford (brilliantly portrayed by Faye Dunaway) adopted her children more as a publicity stunt rather than a true desire to be a mother. She strapped her children in bed and beat them on a regular basis. When she finds a wire hanger in her daughter's closet, she mercilessly beats her with it. When a teenage Christina embarrasses Crawford during a magazine interview, she almost strangles Christina to death. Also, according to this movie, when Crawford died, she left nothing to her children in her will.



9.

Mrs. Lyft, Throw Momma From the Train



Anne Ramsey received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her outrageous performance as the classic mother from hell, who blames her son, Owen (Danny DeVito) for everything wrong with her life, but is the first to scream for Owen's help when she needs him.



8.

Beatrice Hunsdorfer, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds



Joanne Woodward was brilliant as the tacky, loud-mouthed, hard-drinking widowed mother of two daughters who is still harboring anger over the fact that her husband left her years ago and is taking it out on her two teenage daughters.