{"id":89824,"date":"2025-08-24T16:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T16:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/89824\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T16:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T16:00:08","slug":"the-most-iconic-horror-movie-actor-according-to-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/89824\/","title":{"rendered":"The most iconic horror movie actor, according to science"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Horror<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ ShareGrid \/ Georgi Kalaydzhiev)<\/p>\n

Sun 24 August 2025 3:30, UK <\/p>\n

Hollywood has always had a habit of making icons, but the realm of horror<\/a> is one of the most notorious for making unforgettable stars that become intrinsically associate with the genre. <\/p>\n

In 1896 Georges M\u00e9li\u00e8s created what most generally accept as the first ever horror film<\/a>, Le Manoir du Diable or The Devil\u2019s Castle, kickstarting a cinematic trend that has never really waned. The emergence of cinema as an art form coincided with the period\u2019s interest in gothic and macabre literature \u2013\u00a0Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula was published in 1897, for example \u2013 so it didn\u2019t take long for this new medium of moving images to look towards these spine-chilling stories for inspiration.<\/p>\n

Those incendiary years of cinema \u2013 that many of us wish to have experienced in real time \u2013 were predominantly led by adaptations of familiar stories and figures, like The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Frankenstein. Soon, horror became a popular aspect of the cinematic landscape, and you seemingly couldn\u2019t avoid a gothic story on your trip to the cinema. As a result of horror\u2019s popularity, certain actors started to become known for their frequent performances in villainous roles \u2013 but was this a potentially fatal idea for stars, who now ran the risk of being typecast?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Limiting themselves almost entirely to horror films might\u2019ve looked like a daft move on paper, but Boris Karloff \u2013 forever stitched to Frankenstein\u2019s monster \u2013 and Bela Lugosi, tied at the hip to Dracula, carried it off without breaking a sweat. They didn\u2019t fight it; instead, they leaned into the shadows and made it their patch. Before long, they\u2019d become the go-to faces of the macabre, fronting a bold era when cinema-goers could sit in the stalls and watch their worst nightmares lurch about right in front of them.<\/p>\n

Horror has given us many iconic women, too, often dubbed \u2018scream queens\u2019. While these women are often the victims of a vicious killer, like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween or Neve Campbell in Scream<\/a>, they\u2019re hardly damsels in distress. Defining the genre with their defiant presence and ability to fight back (this often leads them to become \u2018the final girl\u2019), many of these actors have become just as tied to horror as classic heavyweights like Lugosi. <\/p>\n

But who is the most iconic horror star of all time? You might say, \u2018well, it depends who you ask,\u2019 but luckily for us, a scientific study has determined an objective answer. In 2018, Livio Bioglio and Ruggero G Pensa carried out a study, published in Applied Network Science, which identified the most iconic stars of certain genres, including horror. With that, we can trust science to tell us that Vincent Price is the winner here, which is hard to dispute \u2013 even if we were trying to argue with science.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Price was a horror aficionado, dominating a terrifying landscape where audiences\u2019 biggest fears came to life. The uncanny reared its ugly head in The House of Wax while paranoia came to a fever pitch in the British folk horror Witchfinder General and bodily transformations reached new levels of grotesqueness in The Fly. With his recognisable thin moustache and cunning eyes, Price had the perfect look for horror, and he appeared in these films with an effortless and unforgettable presence.<\/p>\n

A prolific star, Price\u2019s legacy as a horror icon has long been established, so much so that his voice can even be heard in Michael Jackson\u2019s \u2018Thriller\u2019. So, even if you somehow haven\u2019t seen a classic horror film featuring Price (you\u2019re missing out) then you\u2019ve certainly heard his distinctive voice \u2013 a haunting presence that encapsulated the most iconic scares in Hollywood history, from the supernatural to the chillingly realistic. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ ShareGrid \/ Georgi Kalaydzhiev) Sun 24 August 2025 3:30, UK Hollywood has always had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2754,96,12663,2839,56,54,55,30086],"class_list":["post-89824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-actor","tag-entertainment","tag-horror","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-vincent-price"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}