Actors who never played villains

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Tommy Lee Jones?

Maybe in his early career, but I can't remember him playing a villain in the last 20 years or so...



Tommy Lee Jones?

Maybe in his early career, but I can't remember him playing a villain in the last 20 years or so...


Under Siege (1992), Batman Forever (1995), Natural Born Killers (1994), The Package (1989), Blown Away (1994), JFK (1991), Stormy Monday (1988), "The Executioner's Song" (1992), The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)....

Good memory!
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I think there are quite a few actresses who have had long careers who never played a villain, but the list seems a lot thinner for male actors. Of course, some do it more often than others, but most guys seem to have done it at least once. John Wayne came close in The Searchers and Red River, and was Genghis Khan. Cary Grant I don't think ever did. Nor Gary Cooper, but came close in that movie where he let people drown. Actors today who have been around for at least twenty years, hard to think of one who dodn't go bad once.
Wayne's character in Red River was stubborn and overbearing, and in The Searchers, he was generally bad-tempered and prejudiced, but not what I'd call a true villain in either. The closest he came to a villain, I think, was in Wake of the Red Witch where he wrecks a ship and a woman dies. In The Sea Chase he plays the captain of a German freighter trying to escape internment by the allies at the start of World War II, which makes him the “enemy” of the US and other allied forces. But he’s not a Nazi and it is one of Hollywood’s best villains, Lyle Bettger, who kills innocent seamen in the attempted escape.



I am burdened with glorious purpose
Or maybe he did. Meh, I suck at these things
I just want to give you a pat on the back here... 'cause I suck at topics like this and I'm glad I'm not alone.

Will mentioned Cary Grant.... yea.... did he ever play a villain? Did Jimmy Stewart? We all know Henry Fonda did, but did these other powerhouses?

Of course, how about these guys? The kinds of movies they made prohibit them from being villains:

Debbie Reynolds
Fred Astaire
Gene Kelly
Donald O'Connor
Danny Kaye
Bing Crosby



will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
Gene Kelly was never an outiright villain, not even in Inherit the Wind, but my recollection is he wasn't very nice in Marjorie Morningstar. And he played the rutheless title character in Pal Joey in the original Broadway production. The movie with Frank Sinatra softened the character.



Gene actually did play one honest to goodness "bad guy", in one of his very first movies. It's a little underseen Noir with the unlikely title Christmas Holiday (1944), directed by the great Robert Siodmak, loosely based on a story by William Somerset Maughm. Gene plays a murderer who breaks out of prison to take vengeance on his ex-wife (Deanna Durbin), now a prostitute, who he blames (somewhat irrationally) for his imprisonment. He's even shot and killed by the coppers in the finale.

Not one of Siodmak's very best, but an interesting potboiler with that very un-Gene Kelly-like role.




Will mentioned Cary Grant.... yea.... did he ever play a villain? Did Jimmy Stewart? We all know Henry Fonda did, but did these other powerhouses?
Jimmy Stewart played a really badass crazed killer in the second of The Thin Man series (After the Thin Man) Not only does he kill one person and try to frame his former girlfriend for the murder but he's planning to kill her, Nick Charles, and others when cornered before he's disarmed. Stewart was very good in the role--he should have played more villains.

There was another film where he plays (as I recall) a moonshiner who kills a government agent trying to shut him down, is sentenced to prison for the crime, and while on a southern chaingang invents and makes a rifle that the military manufactures as the semiautomatic M-1 carbine for troops in World War II. Think the film was Carbine Williams (1952), as Stewart was called because of his invention.

In real life, the best that could be said for the M-1 carbine is that it is lighter than the M-1 rifle, the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) or the Thompson machine gun (the last two being extremely heavy to tote). Based on my limited experience, the carbine was more prone to jamming than was the M-1 rifle, and I've been told by WWII veterans that, unlike the M-1 rifle or the .45 automatic pistol, bullets fired from an M-1 carbine had virtually no knockdown power at all. One guy told me he emptied the whole clip from a carbine into a smallish Japanese soldier charging at him without stopping his assailant until he fell dead at his feet. Hit someone with the bigger M-1 rifle slug and he goes down. Pistols are notoriously difficult to fire accurately, but veterans swear if you hit an enemy in the finger with a shot from a .45, it will knock him on his butt.



Not entirely sure, but I can't remember Stallone ever playing a villain.


Hey don't forget his bit part in Woody's Bananas



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
If I'm wrong about this one I'm going over the balcony.

Lake Placid????
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Keep on Rockin in the Free World
If I'm wrong about this one I'm going over the balcony.

its been a long time since i've seen it, but didn't she nurture the killing machine that was the killer Croc in Lake Placid?

(on a side note, the movie didnt take place in New York..if anyone knows why they named it as they did kindly shed a light.)

edit: dang u TUS
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will.15's Avatar
Semper Fooey
Betty White's career restarted when she played mean, back stabbing, husband stealing Sue Givens on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and has often played mean women on television. In fact that is what she usually played ountil she was cast in the Golden Girls.

As for Stallone in Bananas...


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Hey don't forget his bit part in Woody's Bananas
Stallone and Henry Winkler starred as members of a street gang and stole cars in The Lords of Flatbush (1974).



Stallone was the bad guy in the original Death Race 2000-