The best fantasy movie performances ever, but the focus is usually on the heroic (or at least protagonist) characters. Villain actors deserve just as much appreciation for convincingly portraying the person who typically sets the story in motion. There are a range of complex fantasy villains for A-list actors to play, ing different types of stories.

The most evil fantasy movie villains ever are usually just evil for the sake of it, leaving it up to the actors to make them amazingly charismatic when there is no explanation for their actions. Villains with a tragic backstory are potentially easier and more difficult in different ways; while they have more understandable motives, they demand nuance. Many legendary actors have dazzled audiences with their larger-than-life villain performances, completing the best fantasy movies.

10 Geoffrey Rush As Captain Barbossa

Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (2003)

Johnny Depp blew everyone away with Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, earning an Oscar nomination for his strange and witty portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow. The villain of this movie needed to be a forceful figure who could match Jack's antics, giving rise to the equally dynamic Captain Barbossa.

Geoffrey Rush portrays Barbossa as a classic, cackling pirate captain, who has a kind of elegance nonetheless. He is obviously a skilled swordsman and a competent captain (probably even more so than Jack); Rush also conveys Barbossa's simmering frustration and desperation when he dramatically tells Elizabeth about the Aztec Curse.

Depp's portrayal of Jack gets goofier and less satisfying with each new movie, while Rush's Barbossa holds up better. Thanks to Rush, Barbossa is ever grand and ambitious, harboring a range of personal secrets that leak into his outward swashbuckling persona.

9 Tom Hiddleston As Loki

The Avengers (2012)

The MCU has seen numerous A-listers come and go as one-off villains, but Tom Hiddleston gives one of the best performances of the franchise in The Avengers. After being introduced as the "twist" villain of Thor, Loki returns to launch an attack on Earth that prompts the historic team-up/crossover. While Loki’s emotional depth as a character is elaborated upon in later movies, Hiddleston still accomplishes some strong moments in The Avengers that show the inner turmoil arising from Loki's ambition.

The rest of the time, he is swaggering around, both very collected while implying barely restrained mischief. Loki interacts with each of the Avengers and adjusts his scheming approach to each hero's personality. Then, throughout the rest of the MCU, Hiddleston continues to effectively mix Loki's Machiavellian schemes with personal tragedy and self-judgment, with some shamelessly dramatic entrances and moments of peace with Thor.

8 Stephanie Hsu As Jobu Tupaki

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

Joy Wang/Jobu Tupaki fulfills the narrative role of the villain in Everything Everywhere All at Once, even though the story is deeply about Joy's nihilism and her healing alongside her mother. Stephanie Hsu's Oscar-nominated performance comprehensively covers how Jobu's dangerous rebellion comes from a pessimistic worldview. Like everyone in this movie, Hsu is challenged with reconciling the different versions of her character across the multiverse into one being who exhibits slightly different personalities at different times.

Hsu spectacularly portrays Joy/Jobu's boredom and frustration while she adopts some of the craziest costumes ever, delivering poignant theories about the state of life along the way. Even her most detached moments show the emotions that lie underneath, contributing to how she resolves things in Everything Everywhere All at Once's ending. Hsu's career is still in its early days, but it would be especially fascinating to see her play a more classically evil villain after this.

7 Ralph Fiennes As Lord Voldemort

Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire (2005)

Lord Voldemort is an inhuman figure, who is dependent on a certain amount of special effects and makeup to capture the tone that comes across in his scenes in the Harry Potter books. Even so, Ralph Fiennes understood how to play Voldemort so that these things would have the biggest impact. Fiennes stepped into the role of Voldemort for the fourth movie, after the character was briefly played by multiple other actors in the previous installments.

However, Fiennes' otherworldly performance quickly became the one most associated with the character. Playing Voldemort is understanding that the dark wizard could unleash devastating power at any moment. Fiennes portrays Voldemort as controlled at certain times, while at others his anger and determination are horrifying. Yet throughout his tenure as the main Harry Potter villain, Fiennes never lets up on the tension and terror that characterize every scene he is in.

6 Donna Murphy As Mother Gothel

Tangled (2010)

Not everyone can make the switch from live-action to animated and deliver just as vibrant a performance. Stage and screen actress Donna Murphy brought to life an incredible version of the famous Rapunzel villain, who is vivacious and almost nurturing, but subtly evil up until she outwardly commits to being the "bad guy."

Not every actor can convey so much personality in their voice acting, but Gothel is sweeping and glamorous in her dialogue and her singing. Part of this is the script and the basic character design, but Murphy doubtlessly did her part to elevate both.

Vital to making the character work is the quiet moments of gaslighting Rapunzel, with Gothel convincing her adoptive daughter of self-pity; Murphy delivers these lines with well-chosen intonation. Gothel deserves her place among the best Disney villains ever when Murphy helped create a selfish and engaging persona with the same grandeur as Maleficent and Ursula.

5 Tilda Swinton As The White Witch

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe (2005)

Casting the White Witch for Greta Gerwig's Narnia movies is possibly the biggest challenge the Netflix reboot faces when it will be almost impossible to live up to Tilda Swinton's perfect portrayal. Swinton is always cold in this movie, even when Jadis is being friendly to Edmund to gain his trust. She is mystical and grand, cruelly ruling over Narnia with absolute confidence that no one can defeat her. Her unsettling, ghostly presence continues in the two Narnia movie sequels through her cameos.

However, Swinton can also flip the White Witch's comportment at the drop of a hat, turning her into an explosive force when the situation calls for it. Her outrage when things don't go her way constitutes a strong performance, but how she plays the character on the battlefield is amazing. During the final battle of the first Narnia movie, Swinton shows how the Witch is a stone-cold warrior, while revealing hints of fear when she is defeated.

4 Ralph Ineson As The Green Knight

The Green Knight (2021)

The Green Knight is a surrealistic take on the famous episode of medieval Arthurian literature, which depends upon an equally metaphorical villain. The team behind the movie decked out Ralph Ineson in heavy costuming and CGI to recreate the otherworldly presence the Green Knight has in the original source material. However, Ineson pulls the whole thing together with his voice performance in the few vital scenes he has.

The Green Knight's slow movements and rumbling voice remind the knights, intuitively and not consciously, that he is there to judge them. The final moments of the movie are arguably Ineson's best — although his chilling laugh while leaving after his first scene is a strong competitor — illustrating the true complexity of this entity. When Gawain comes to the lesson he needs to learn, the Green Knight's response is impressed and gentle, but still simply stating the facts of the consequences for what has been done.

3 Sergi López As Captain Vidal

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

Pan's Labyrinth fascinatingly captures the feeling of looking up on the whole situation, when the story is told from the perspective of Ofelia, a child who has no control over her circumstances — only some escape through the fantasy adventure she conjures up. Her vile stepfather reigns over her new life, representing all the evil in the story. Sergi López masterfully portrays Captain Vidal's brutal decorum, terrorizing everyone around him with the self-conviction of respectability.

Ofelia's fantasy world and the creatures she finds in it are a kaleidoscope of what is happening in the movie's definitive reality. The Pale Man represents a form of greed and mercilessness aimed at children, which Ofelia narrowly escapes. Pan's Labyrinth is so effective because it has such a bloodthirsty and real villain to project this aspect of the fantasy onto, who holds up as a character through López's performance.

2 Christopher Lee As Saruman

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001)

Saruman is another villain who needs a sense of grandeur in every scene, for which Christopher Lee was a perfect choice. Lee had an amazing, commanding voice that served him well when he played both his Lord of the Rings and Star Wars villains, conveying the wisdom that Saruman and Count Dooku at least believe they have. In Lord of the Rings, he and Ian McKellen play off each other with the familiarity of people who have worked together for a long time, before and after Saruman's betrayal.

Saruman stands apart from the other villains in Lord of the Rings, with a calculated persona that almost makes one think he should be on the side of the heroes. However, his careful planning is always in the service of cruelty and destruction, showcasing a complex villain who believes he has taken the only viable path forward. Throughout the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, Lee has the loftiness to make Saruman intelligent and terrifying.

1 Helena Bonham Carter As Bellatrix Lestrange

Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (2007)

Bellatrix is a strong competitor for the most iconic villain of the Harry Potter series, even over Lord Voldemort. Known for her macabre and chaotic roles, Helena Bonham Carter threw herself into Bellatrix's wild villainy, only enjoying herself as she ruins others' lives.

Carter adopts the perfect look for Bellatrix, with her messy hair and distorted period attire capturing the character's origins as well as the pandemonium she always cultivates. Once she was in costume, Carter perfectly taunted and shouted her way through the Harry Potter movies.

Carter nails a handful of scenes that show different aspects of Bellatrix's character — like her judgment of Snape and her fear of disappointing her master — that make her a real person, no matter how violent she is. Few fantasy movie villains are as iconic as the ones in Harry Potter, but Carter is in good company when it comes to the history of actors who have played such villains.