15 Actors Who Have Played Both Superheroes And Supervillains
Sure, it’s great to be the hero who saves the world and returns order to innocent people’s lives. However, it must also be delicious fun to take on the villain who wreaks havoc and enjoys every chaotic second. For the talented actors who played superheroes and supervillains, they've had the rare chance to do both.
A great hero will captivate an audience and make them stand and cheer. The perfect villain will enrage an audience and make them boo. One movie truth is that a great hero is absolutely nothing without a worthy adversary.
Which actor impressed you the most with their ability to play both good and evil? Make your voice heard. Vote up the actors who made it work as both a supervillain and a superhero.
Most Reagan-era movie fans knew Michael Keaton as the comedic actor from 1980s comedies like Mr. Mom and Beetlejuice. During that time, superhero movies were not anywhere near as ubiquitous as they became in later decades. When Warner Bros. announced it was making a big-budget Batman movie, comic book fans got excited. However, many of those same fans were unhappy when director Tim Burton hired Keaton to play the title role.
Despite the Bat-controversy, Keaton admirably performed as the Dark Knight in two Batman features - 1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns. Prior to Keaton’s turn as the vigilante superhero, most people only knew the campy Adam West version of Batman from the tongue-in-cheek 1960s television series. Keaton brought a complicated, intellectual quality to the superhero.
Keaton turned supervillain for 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming. The Oscar-nominated actor played arms dealer Adrian Toomes, who becomes the villainous Vulture. Keaton’s bad-guy character was both supervillain and respected family man. Co-producer Eric Hauserman Carroll described Toomes as "the dark Tony Stark."
Pulled off both?Josh Brolin first entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the supervillain Thanos in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy. Thanos did not have a big presence in Guardians, but his trouble-making role grew in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. The alien warlord from the planet Titan is such a mighty supervillain that the Avengers have to call in superhero reinforcements - the Guardians among them.
Brolin must be doing something right as Thanos. In 2020, Thanos was ranked as the world's most popular film villain.
Brolin later took on the enigmatic Cable in 2018's Deadpool 2. The time-traveling mutant soldier is not necessarily a good guy or a bad guy. His body has been mostly remade with cybernetics. He has the strength and ability to kill and/or beat up just about anything.
Both Thanos and Cable are important Marvel characters. Which one does Brolin prefer playing? According to Rob Liefield, who co-created the character Cable, Brolin is looking forward to playing Cable in additional MCU films:
Josh wants to be Cable again sooner than later. He is itching to be Cable again. He loved being Cable. He told me he understands how beloved his role as Thanos is, but he doesn't look completely like Josh Brolin.
Pulled off both?We don't get to see much of Hugo Weaving's face in either of these two comic book roles. Movie fans will most likely recognize the British actor as Agent Smith from The Matrix trilogy and the half-elven Elron from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit franchises.
In 2005, he portrayed the masked V in V for Vendetta. V maybe an anarchist terrorist, but his heart is in the right place. Weaving hides his face behind the Guy Fawkes mask for the entire film. However, the actor adds the perfect amount of flair and mystery to make the freedom fighter memorable.
Weaving went over to the dark side in 2011 to portray the supervillain Red Skull in 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger. The audience only gets to see Weaving's face when he is Adolf Hitler's colleague Johann Schmidt. He becomes Red Skull when his face is disfigured after he injects himself with Super Soldier Serum. Weaving is more than convincing and went down as one of the MCU's most ferocious villains.
Pulled off both?Idris Elba just looks like a natural superhero. The English actor entered the MCU in the supporting role of Heimdall in 2011's Thor. Heimdall also fought the bad guys in Thor: The Dark World, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Thor: Ragnarok, and Avengers: Infinity War. Heimdall, the all-seeing guard who keeps a watchful orange eye on the Nine Realms, was played by Elba as his film career was on the rise.
Heimdall met his end in Infinity War. However, his character and Elba's star power are perhaps popular enough that Heimdall may wind up back in the MCU despite his demise.
Elba is no stranger to playing the villain, of course. He burst onto the acting scene as the stylish antagonist Stringer Bell in HBO's The Wire. More recently, Elba was cast to play the supervillain Robert DuBois/Bloodsport in James Gunn's Suicide Squad sequel/soft reboot, The Suicide Squad. Bloodsport's bloody backstory is a troubling one. In the Superman comics, DuBois wipes out 25 innocent people at a diner on Christmas Eve during a merciless shooting.
The film's director James Gunn took to social media to gush over Elba's performance in The Suicide Squad and wish him a happy birthday:
I rarely write roles for actors I've never met, but I did exactly that for @idriselba in #TheSuicideSquad & couldn't be happier I did - you went beyond my expectations as an actor AND as a human being. I can't wait for folks to see you as #Bloodsport. Happy Birthday, my friend!
Pulled off both?Michelle Pfeiffer was at the height of her Hollywood fame when she decided to put on a tight catsuit and turn villain for Tim Burton's 1992 sequel Batman Returns. Pfeiffer's performance as Selina Kyle/Catwoman opposite Michael Keaton's Batman is widely regarded as the best live-action Catwoman performance across both television and film.
Pfeiffer's natural sex appeal and ability to go from Selina's mousy personality to all-out delicious villain is impressive. It's tough to argue that Catwoman is the Oscar-nominated actress's best career performance, but it's at least in the discussion.
Pfeiffer crossed over from the DC world to the Marvel Universe to play Janet van Dyne in 2018's Ant-Man and the Wasp and reprised her role in Avengers: Endgame.
Janet van Dyne is Hope van Dyne/The Wasp's (Evangeline Lilly) mother (and the original Wasp) and wife of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas). The character has a heroic past and once sacrificed herself in order to disarm a Soviet missile.
Pulled off both?Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy takes on a much more serious tone than the Batman films from the 1980s and '90s. Christian Bale, a serious dramatic actor with an impressive body of work, appeared as the Caped Crusader in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises.
The trilogy was both critically acclaimed and a box-office behemoth. Nolan and Bale successfully made the flawed DC superhero with a dark past a much more realistic character. In between the last two films of the trilogy, Bale won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Fighter.
Bale is no stranger to dubious characters. He played a (maybe) serial killer in American Psycho as well as the controversial Dick Cheney in Vice. The Welsh actor is set to play supervillain Gorr the God Butcher in Taika Waititi's fourth Thor installment, Thor: Love and Thunder, which has a 2022 release date. Just the name "Gorr the God Butcher" sounds like real trouble for the Norse god Thor.
Gorr may not be the best-known villain in the MCU, but his interesting backstory is filled with grief and tragedy. His pregnant wife and all his children were wiped out due to natural disasters. It's no wonder why Gorr becomes a villain hell-bent on killing gods.
Pulled off both?
