TV & Movies

The 36 Most Deliciously Evil Female Villains in Film and TV

Image may contain Barefoot Person Teen Adult Clothing Swimwear Chair Furniture Fitness Pilates and Sport
Photo: Mubi

Female villains across film and TV often have three things in common: a killer wardrobe, a dramatic beauty look, and an arsenal of memorable one-liners that help to ensure the spotlight remains firmly on them. Little wonder, then, that Hollywood’s hottest stars have long been lining up to play the most amoral characters in cinema.

First there are the comic book and Marvel bad girls, like Suicide Squad’s Harley Quinn. Just because they’re bad on the inside, doesn’t mean they can’t be glamorous on the outside—think Angelina Jolie in Disney’s Maleficent, with her signature blood-red pout. Next come the seductresses and killers, like Sharon Stone as the manipulative Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct or Jodie Comer’s well-dressed assassin Villanelle in Killing Eve.

Then there’s another category: the conflicted villainess. These women can’t quite decide which side they’re on, and will occasionally use their powers for good—especially if there’s something in it for them. Here, Vogue revisits some of the best portrayals of female villains in Hollywood history.

  • You could argue that there are no villains per se in Mike Whites sunbaked satire—or that almost all of the characters...
    Photo: HBO
    1/30

    Leslie Bibb and Michelle Monaghan in The White Lotus

    You could argue that there are no villains, per se, in Mike White’s sun-baked satire—or that almost all of the characters are villains?—but two of the women who most attracted our ire in Season 3 were Bibb’s gossipy, Trump-voting Texan housewife and Monaghan’s glossy-haired, conniving Hollywood star. Deliciously venomous, hilariously fake, and endlessly competitive, they’re a thrill to watch and very, very easy to despise.

  • Photo: HBO
    2/30

    Kaitlyn Dever in The Last of Us

    The second season of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s dystopian epic introduces us to Abby, a hard-as-nails adversary to Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal’s beloved Ellie and Joel, who delivers the show’s most brutally shocking moment to date. But, as played by the sensitive Dever, there’s also a wounded vulnerability underneath her simmering rage—something we’ll likely get to examine more closely in the series’ next installment.

  • Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features
    3/30

    Emma Stone in Bugonia

    Even before her head is shaved—by the conspiracy theorists (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) who kidnap her—and her face slathered in white cream, Stone is utterly terrifying in Yorgos Lanthimos’s batshit sci-fi caper. As the eye-rolling, buzzword-regurgitating CEO of a nefarious pharmaceutical company who brushes off the consequences of her actions without batting an eyelid, she’s the embodiment of corporate evil.

  • Photo: Mubi
    4/30

    Margaret Qualley in The Substance

    As Demi Moore’s devilishly seductive alter ego, Sue—who literally emerges from her body after she injects herself with a mysterious green liquid in Coralie Fargeat’s jaw-dropping, mile-a-minute work of body horror—Margaret Qualley is as sugary sweet as she is deadly, determined to take over her predecessor’s life by any means necessary. The consequences are truly horrifying.

  • Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix
    5/30

    Jessica Madsen in Bridgerton

    With her retina-searing, elaborately ruffled outfits and venomous snark, there’s no one else in the Ton quite like Cressida Cowper. She can destroy you with a single withering put-down, upstage you at your own ball, and steal your suitor (and any chance of future happiness) without a backwards glance, though, as she proved in the latest season of Shonda Rhimes’s delicious Regency romp, there’s much more to her than initially meets the eye.

    More from Vogue
Radhika Seth is the film culture editor at British Vogue. She works across both the magazine and the website’s Arts Lifestyle section, writing and editing pieces on film, TV, and awards season, as well as travel and food. She previously held the same role at Vogue Global Network, ... Read More