Beloved Actors You Forgot Played Cold-Blooded Killers

Steve Zahn has always been a performer of surprising range and versatility, but found his pop-cultural niche mostly playing scene-stealing “best friend” or stoner types in broad comedies and good-natured romantic dramedies. With A Perfect Getaway, a little-seen 2009 thriller also starring Milla Jovovich and Timothy Olyphant, Steve Zahn breaks free of that overtly chipper image. Zahn plays one member of a pair of vacationing couples in Hawaii who become embroiled in a series of murders on the island - murders reportedly committed by a couple. We get to know three separate couples on the island; everyone naturally seems to fear for their lives as suspicions arise that the killers are somewhere among this relatively small group.

Naturally, that suspicion proves true, and it turns out to be Zahn’s Rocky - a meth addicted serial killer - alongside Cydney (Jovovich), his literal partner-in-crime. We learn that the pair's criminal pattern is adopting the identities of their victims, and Rocky has been the ringleader of the operation since stealing Cydney's heart years earlier. A Perfect Getaway takes advantage of Zahn’s preternatural likeability, making the twist twice as difficult to predict.

Michael Keaton's initial claim to fame came on the back of his prodigious comedic skills, a talent that he employs perfectly in a number of his most iconic roles, from Beetlejuice to Batman. And while he eventually proved to be an equally excellent performer in the dramatic space, unapologetic villainy is still a rare sight on Keaton’s oeuvre. One such deviation came in the 1998 thriller Desperate Measures, in which Keaton plays a true-blue sociopath named Peter McCabe, imprisoned for multiple murders. When McCabe is found by a desperate FBI agent to have a perfect bone marrow match for his leukemia-stricken son, the killer uses the agent’s proposition as a means to orchestrate a bloody escape.

The film was a resounding box-office flop, and drifted almost immediately from the minds of audiences, allowing the surprisingly villainous turn of Keaton in more recent Spider-Man movies to be a thrilling and unexpected treat.

A Hollywood golden boy of the highest order for quite some time, Kevin Costner spent decades at the absolute zenith of the leading man totem pole. Following an equally successful run as a director, Costner found his career in a relative lull. It’s during this brief hiatus from box-office mastery that the filmmaker starred as one half of the titular dual-personality possessing villain in the effective, if under-appreciated, Mr. Brooks.

Costner is the aforementioned Mr. Brooks, a successful and charming businessman, beset by a death-addicted alter-ego embodied by another former Hollywood golden-boy, William Hurt. When what Brooks resolves to be the final murder spins out of control and leaves him subject to the whims of a vicious voyeur and on the run from a voracious detective, Brooks is tasked with finding a way out before the walls close in entirely. It’s a thrilling and sly use of Costner’s All-American charm, pitching him as the not-totally-innocent Dr. Jekyll to Hurt’s Hyde.

Keanu Reeves, even before his current status as the internet’s boyfriend, has always been best known for his numerous performances as something of a straightforward hero. It may be a troubled loner, an undercover cop, or a computational anomaly designed to guarantee the continuation of a techno-dystopia… but one archetype or another, he’s almost always the hero. And while there might be a few notable exceptions, one of the most forgotten examples of Reeves going against type comes in the 2000 thriller The Watcher.

The film finds Reeves playing a notorious serial killer, David Allen Griffin, who follows his investigating officer to his new home post-retirement and torments him mercilessly with continued murders that directly involve him. The film skirted over the break-even point in terms of financial returns but was heavily derided by critics upon its release. A prominent point of contention amongst the negative reviews? Reeves's Razzie-nominated performance as the villain.

Cary Elwes is without a doubt best known for his performances as the heroic (if mildly dim) Westley in the generation-spanning fantasy classic The Princess Bride, or his parodic interpretation of the titular beloved swashbuckler in Robin Hood: Men in Tights. A comically handsome pastiche of old-world leading men in the Errol Flynn mold, Elwes has comedic talents that are difficult to understate. And while he’s now better known for his parts in the relentlessly grim Saw saga, an earlier foray into the world of determinedly dour thrillers in Kiss the Girls hinted at career paths to come.

Part of the late 90s/early 2000s period in which only three things seemed guaranteed - death, taxes, and Ashley Judd neo-noirs - Kiss the Girls managed enough box-office returns to guarantee a sequel, but has faded from pop-culture relevance in almost every way. And while it’s certainly not a modern classic, Elwes's performance contributes to its eminent watchability, cashing in on the expectation of his effervescent charisma in order to heighten the impact of his character (a detective), in particular the revelation that he is the movie’s central serial killer.

Whether going grizzled grump with a heart of gold (True Grit), or stoned teddy bear (The Big Lebowski), Jeff Bridges is generally best recognized as the bearded bearer of all characters beloved. Even his villains have a certain down-home likability that bely their true intentions (Iron Man). That’s what makes Bridges's straightforwardly menacing performance in 1993’s English-language remake of The Vanishing such an outlier.

Largely forgotten after flopping at the box office, the flick sees Bridges taking on the mantle of a kidnapping and serial-killing maniac with the unassuming moniker of Barney Cousins. And while Bridges acquits himself admirably as the disturbed vanisher in question, the movie was generally reviled upon its release for failing to live up to its identically titled predecessor, and promptly left the public consciousness as a result.