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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Mon 8 September 2025 17:45, UK <\/p>\n
Ask a movie buff to name the actors they most associate with moustache-twirling screen villainy, and a few names will immediately spring to mind. In Steven Spielberg<\/a>\u2019s opinion, though, there is one big-screen bad guy who holds the crown as the best in the world. <\/p>\n Creating a truly great movie villain is a tall order, and something that most movies simply fail to accomplish. This is why, when any actor shows they have an aptitude for memorable, charismatic, terrifying performances, they tend to be typecast as denizens of the dark side. After all, bad villains are a dime a dozen, but good villains are as rare as goldust.<\/p>\n Gary Oldman became Hollywood\u2019s go-to black hat in the \u201890s<\/a> thanks to movies like The Fifth Element, Leon: The Professional, and Air Force One, which all popped with the intensity of spiced champagne. He delivered instantly iconic, menacing turns in those films, and audiences lapped them up. <\/p>\n Other actors who became synonymous with playing baddies in the modern era include the mercurial Alan Rickman, the menacing Christoph Waltz, devilish Glenn Close, and the charismatic Christopher Walken, while a trip into Hollywood history reveals the likes of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Peter Lorre as the villains du jour.\u00a0<\/p>\n Fascinatingly, though, none of these legends were pinpointed by Spielberg as the best of the best at portraying on-screen wickedness. Instead, he picked an international actor who was an idol in his homeland, but virtually unknown to American and European audiences. Well, aside from one role that scarred an entire generation of children. \u201cAmrish is my favourite villain,\u201d Spielberg once gushed about Amrish Puri, who played the infamous heart-ripping voodoo priest Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. \u201cThe best the world has ever produced and ever will.\u201d<\/p>\n To Western audiences, this may sound like an unusual pick, but that is simply because Puri only worked on two Hollywood films. Starring in Richard Attenborough\u2019s Gandhi in 1982 was integral to his signing up for Temple of Doom. <\/p>\n