{"id":16313,"date":"2025-10-25T15:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T15:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/16313\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T15:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T15:09:07","slug":"13-best-hollywood-scream-queens-ranked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/16313\/","title":{"rendered":"13 Best Hollywood Scream Queens, Ranked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mary Elizabeth Winstead<\/a> and Maika Monroe<\/a>, two horror-genre faves, joined forces for The Hand That Rocks the Cradle<\/a>, a horror thriller movie that debuted on Hulu<\/a> on Wednesday, October 22. In the film, Winstead plays a suburban mother who employs Monroe\u2019s nanny, only to discover the new hire isn\u2019t who she says she is.<\/p>\n

Winstead and Monroe have already achieved scream-queen status, the former with films like Final Destination 3<\/a> and Black Christmas<\/a>, the latter with It Follows<\/a> and Longlegs<\/a>. And soon we might rank them in the pantheon of scream queens, but for now, these 13 women are our picks for the horror genre\u2019s royalty.<\/p>\n

13. Regina Hall<\/p>\n

Hall spoofed the horror genre as a star of the first four Scary Movie<\/a> installments and is returning for the sixth<\/a>. But she also played a haunted school administrator in the 2022 film Master<\/a>, so she has us screaming with laughter and actually screaming.<\/p>\n

12. Dee Wallace<\/p>\n

Yes, the mom from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial<\/a> has horror-film bona fides. We\u2019re talking The Stepford Wives, The Hills Have Eyes<\/a>, The Howling<\/a>, Cujo, Critters<\/a>, The Frighteners, and Rob Zombie<\/a>\u2019s Halloween<\/a> (in which she played Laurie Strode\u2019s mom).<\/p>\n

11. Mia Goth<\/p>\n

Goth teamed up with filmmaker Ti West<\/a> to lead the X<\/a> film franchise, playing the dual roles of Maxine Minx and Pearl in the first film and its sequels Pearl<\/a> and MaXXXine<\/a>. Now she\u2019s tacking another famous horror story with a role in Guillermo del Toro<\/a>\u2019s Frankenstein<\/a>.<\/p>\n

10. Keke Palmer<\/p>\n

Moviegoers saw Palmer battle a carnivorous UFO in as Em Haywood in Nope<\/a>, but she\u2019s been starring in horror fare for more than a decade now, from the horror film Animal<\/a> to the TV shows Scream Queens<\/a> and Scream: The TV Series<\/a>. Now Palmer is producing her own horror content with the web series Dread Manor.<\/p>\n

9. Heather Langenkamp<\/p>\n

Langenkamp portrayed Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street<\/a> franchise, but that wasn\u2019t the final appearance of this \u201cfinal girl.\u201d Nancy returned in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors<\/a>, and Langenkamp played both the character and herself in Wes Craven\u2019s New Nightmare<\/a>.<\/p>\n

8. Neve Campbell<\/p>\n

Campbell isn\u2019t just a scream queen but a Scream<\/a> queen, starring as Sidney Prescott in all but one film of the franchise, making a triumphant comeback in the upcoming Scream 7<\/a>. She also took a turn for the witchy in The Craft<\/a>, and don\u2019t forget about her part in Are You Afraid of the Dark?<\/a><\/p>\n

7. Fay Wray<\/p>\n

It was beauty that killed the beast\u2026 and this King Kong<\/a> star who got a reputation as the first scream queen. Aside from that monster hit, Wray\u2019s other horror roles include parts in Doctor X, The Most Dangerous Game<\/a>, Mystery of the Wax Museum<\/a>, The Vampire Bat, and Black Moon.<\/p>\n

6. Lin Shaye<\/p>\n

You might not know Shaye by name, but you\u2019ve likely seen her work. Her horror credits include the Nightmare on Elm Street, Ouija<\/a>, and Critters franchises, plus Alone in the Dark and The Grudge<\/a>. But now she\u2019s best known for playing Elise Rainier in all five \u2014 soon to be six \u2014 Insidious<\/a> movies.<\/p>\n

5. Sarah Paulson<\/p>\n

Paulson is the leading lady of American Horror Story<\/a>, appearing in nine of 12 seasons so far and logging more appearances than any other woman on the show. And she went from tormented to tormentor as the star of the horrifying Ratched<\/a>, another Ryan Murphy<\/a> production.<\/p>\n

4. Sigourney Weaver<\/p>\n

In space, no one can hear you scream\u2026 but in theaters, everyone could hear you scream as the xenomorphs of the Alien<\/a> franchise terrorized Ellen Ripley across four movies. And for playing the lieutenant and lone survivor of the first Alien film, Weaver earned her her first Academy Award<\/a> nomination.<\/p>\n

3. Janet Leigh<\/p>\n

Cinema\u2019s best-known scream is arguably Leigh\u2019s in Psycho<\/a>: Even though she died early in the Hitchcock film, that shower scene is iconic. Leigh returned to the horror genre alongside her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis<\/a>, in The Fog<\/a> and Halloween H20: Halloween 20 Years Later<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Sarah Michelle Gellar<\/p>\n

Gellar has built her career on horror, from her appearances in Scream 2<\/a> and the upcoming Ready or Not: Here I Come to her roles in the Grudge<\/a> and I Know What You Did Last Summer<\/a> franchises. And then there\u2019s Buffy<\/a>, in which she screamed less and slayed more.<\/p>\n

1. Jamie Lee Curtis<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a reason Murphy cast Curtis, Leigh\u2019s daughter, in Scream Queens. Curtis\u2019 Laurie Strode went from hunted to hunter in Halloween<\/a> films across nearly half a decade, and she became the best-known face of horror as she went from scream princess to quintessential scream queen.<\/p>\n

Read the latest entertainment news on TV Insider<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Maika Monroe, two horror-genre faves, joined forces for The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16314,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[11674,11680,11682,9408,11684,11672,11675,11679,11677,11673,11683,11676,9,24,63,122,124,123,9274,693,11678,11681],"class_list":["post-16313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-everett-collection","tag-halloween-ends","tag-heather-langenkamp","tag-horror-genre","tag-horror-thriller","tag-jamie-lee-curtis","tag-janet-leigh","tag-laurie","tag-maika-monroe","tag-mary-elizabeth-winstead","tag-nancy-thompson","tag-neve-campbell","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-scream","tag-scream-queens","tag-scream-queen","tag-the-hand-that-rocks-the-cradle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}