AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains

The list

Heroes

Villains

The characters

• The Silence of the Lambs and It's a Wonderful Life are the only films to place a character in the top ten of both lists. In addition, Batman and Schindler's List are the only other films to have characters appear on both lists.
• Four franchises have both a hero and villain listed for separate films: the Alien is from Alien while Ellen Ripley is listed for the sequel, Aliens; Darth Vader is listed for The Empire Strikes Back while Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi are cited for A New Hope; the Terminator is listed as a villain for The Terminator and as a hero for ; and James Bond is listed for Dr. No while Auric Goldfinger of Goldfinger was the only Bond villain cited.
• The Terminator is the only character to be listed as both a villain and a hero. Within the films, these are different but physically identical characters, both played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
• Four characters from four different Stanley Kubrick films appear: three villains and one hero.
• On each list, there appears only a single character of African descent: Virgil Tibbs as a hero for In the Heat of the Night and Alonzo Harris as a villain for Training Day.
• Only eight human heroines and fifteen villainesses are listed. The heroine Lassie is female, though she was portrayed by a male dog in all television shows and movies featuring the character.
• Twelve-year-old Regan MacNeil from The Exorcist is the youngest human character on the list.
• Lassie, the Terminator, and Superman are the only non-human heroes. The shark from Jaws, the Terminator, HAL 9000, the Martians, and the Alien are the only non-human villains.
• In Bambi, "Man" specifically refers to the hunter who killed Bambi's mother, and he could be anybody and represents cruelty to animals. He is also the only character on either list not to appear on screen in any way.
• Only three characters from animated films appear, all as villains: Queen Grimhilde, "Man", and Cruella de Vil.
• The Terminator is the only hero listed with no proper given name, as Juror 8 is named Davis. In the villains list, the Wicked Witch of the West, the Alien, the Shark, "Man", Terminator, and the Martians all lack names.

  The actors

• Jodie Foster's portrayal of special FBI agent Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs was ranked No. 6 in hero's list making her the highest ranked heroine; and Margaret Hamilton's performance as Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz was ranked No. 4 on villains list which make her the highest ranked female villain.
• Gary Cooper is the only actor to appear three times on the list; in all three instances, he appears on the heroes list.
• Eleven more actors appear exactly twice on the same list: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Robert Mitchum, Faye Dunaway, and Jack Nicholson on the villains list; and Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, Harrison Ford, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and James Stewart on the heroes list.
• Al Pacino and Arnold Schwarzenegger are the only actors to appear on both lists. Schwarzenegger appears on both lists portraying different Terminators, while Pacino appears as characters from unrelated films.
• Out of all the actors who appear on the list, twenty-one of them—Kathy Bates, Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper, Russell Crowe, Robert Donat, Michael Douglas, Sally Field, Louise Fletcher, Jodie Foster, Gene Hackman, Tom Hanks, Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Frances McDormand, Gregory Peck, Julia Roberts, George C. Scott, Kevin Spacey, Spencer Tracy, Denzel Washington, and John Wayne—received Academy Awards for their performances. Gary Cooper won twice, once for Will Kane and once for Alvin York. Of the remaining actors, Judith Anderson, Anne Baxter, Warren Beatty, Linda Blair, Humphrey Bogart, Glenn Close, Bette Davis, Geena Davis, Faye Dunaway, Ralph Fiennes, Henry Fonda, Alec Guinness, Angela Lansbury, Charles Laughton, Paul Muni, Liam Neeson, Paul Newman, Robert De Niro, Laurence Olivier, Peter O'Toole, Al Pacino, Susan Sarandon, Sylvester Stallone, Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Meryl Streep, and Sigourney Weaver were also nominated, but did not win.
• Faye Dunaway's portrayal of real-life Oscar-winning actress Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest is the only Razzie-winning and/or nominated role on this list.