James Bond Villain Rankings
by aeternum007 | created - 19 Feb 2018 | updated - 07 Aug 2022 | PublicJames Bond Villain Rankings
1. Harold Sakata
Actor | Goldfinger
The most famous henchman of the entire James Bond series of spy thrillers, Harold Sakata will forever be remembered as the villainous "Odd Job" in the ultimate Bond film, Goldfinger (1964), with his lethal martial arts and steel-brimmed bowler hat. He was born Toshiyuki Sakata in Hawaii, of ...
(#1) Oddjob
2. Gert Fröbe
Actor | Goldfinger
Tall, portly built German born actor (and talented violinist) who notched up over 100 film appearances, predominantly in German-language productions. He will forever be remembered by Western audiences as the bombastic megalomaniac "Auric Goldfinger" trying to kill Sean Connery and irradiate the ...
(#2) Goldfinger
3. Richard Kiel
Actor | Moonraker
Towering 7' 2" tall actor who cornered the market on playing giants, intimidating henchmen, bayou swamp monsters and steel toothed villains! Kiel worked in numerous jobs including as a night club bouncer and a cemetery plot salesman, before breaking into film & TV in several minor roles in the late...
(#3) Jaws
4. Christopher Lee
Actor | Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was perhaps the only actor of his generation to have starred in so many films and cult saga. Although most notable for personifying bloodsucking vampire, Dracula, on screen, he portrayed other varied characters on screen, most of which were villains, whether it ...
(#4) Francisco Scaramanga
5. Hervé Villechaize
Actor | The Man with the Golden Gun
Hervé Villechaize was born in Montauban, France on April 23, 1943. He stopped growing very early and his father (who was a surgeon) tried to find a cure by visiting several doctors and hospitals. But there was none, so Hervé had to live with his small height and also with undersized lungs. He ...
(#5) Nick Nack
6. Lotte Lenya
Actress | From Russia with Love
Lotte Lenya was a Tony Award-winning and Academy award-nominated actress and singer. While best remembered in the U.S. for her supporting role as Rosa Klebb in the classic Bond film From Russia with Love (1963), she is celebrated in Germany for her ground-breaking performances in the plays of Kurt ...
(#6) Rosa Klebb
7. Robert Shaw
Actor | Jaws
Robert Archibald Shaw was born on August 9, 1927, in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, the eldest son of Doreen Nora (Avery), a nurse, and Thomas Archibald Shaw, a doctor. His paternal grandfather was Scottish, from Argyll. Shaw's mother, who was born in Piggs Peak, Swaziland, met his father while...
(#7) Donald "Red" Grant
8. Peter Lorre
Actor | M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder
Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in Rózsahegy in the Slovak area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Hungarian Jewish parents. He learned both Hungarian and German languages from birth, and was educated in elementary and secondary schools in the Austria-Hungary capitol Vienna, but did ...
(#8) Le Chiffre
9. Donald Pleasence
Actor | Halloween II
Balding, quietly spoken, of slight build and possessed of piercing blue eyes -- often peering out from behind round, steel-rimmed glasses -- Donald Pleasence had the essential physical attributes which make a great screen villain. In the course of his lengthy career, he relished playing the ...
(#9) Ernst Stavro Blofeld #2
10. Adolfo Celi
Actor | Thunderball
Sicilian born actor/writer/director was very popular with European audiences, but largely unknown to the west apart from his portrayal of the villainous SPECTRE agent "Emilio Largo" in the spectacular James Bond film Thunderball (1965). However, due to his heavy accent, Celi's voice was dubbed by ...
(#10) Emilio Largo
11. Joseph Wiseman
Actor | Dr. No
Joseph Wiseman was born on May 15, 1918 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He came to Broadway in the 1930s, where he was critically hailed for performances in Shakespeare's "King Lear", Clifford Odets' "Golden Boy" and Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya". Motion pictures in which Wiseman has been seen include ...
(#11) Dr. No
12. Julius Harris
Actor | Live and Let Die
Prior to breaking into films, Philadelphia native Julius Harris worked as a bouncer in New York City. It was due to his many associations with struggling actors, that on a dare, Harris auditioned for his first role, in the well-received picture Nothing But a Man (1964), in which he played a father ...
(#12) Tee Hee Johnson
13. Geoffrey Holder
Actor | Annie
Dancer, choreographer and actor Geoffrey Holder was born on August 1, 1930, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, into a middle-class family. One of four children, he was taught painting and dancing by his older brother Boscoe Holder, whose dance troupe, the Holder Dance Company, the young Geoffrey joined ...
(#13) Baron Samedi
14. Earl Jolly Brown
Actor | Live and Let Die
Earl Jolly Brown was born on October 18, 1939 in Houston, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Live and Let Die (1973), Black Belt Jones (1974) and Linda Lovelace for President (1975). He died on August 24, 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
(#14) Whisper
15. Yaphet Kotto
Actor | Alien
Physically imposing, intense Yaphet Kotto was one of the few actors of his generation to succeed in breaking racial stereotypes in Hollywood. He was born in Harlem, New York, the son of Gladys, a nurse and army officer, and Abraham Kotto, a businessman-turned-construction worker. His father was a ...
(#15) Dr. Kananga / Mr. Big
16. Orson Welles
Actor | Citizen Kane
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was ...
(#16) Le Chiffre #2
17. Putter Smith
Actor | Diamonds Are Forever
A jazz bassist turned actor, Putter Smith got his breakthrough role as the henchman Mr. Kidd in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) after producer Harry Saltzman spot him at a Thelonious Monk concert. He and Bruce Glover as Mr. Wint give a lot of trouble to his victims and to James Bond as well. The role ...
(#17) Mr. Smith
18. Bruce Glover
Actor | Diamonds Are Forever
An instinct for acting showed very early for Bruce. In 1935, aged 3, he distracted his mother from the worries of Depression Era Chicago by recreating stuff they'd seen at the movies like FDR struggling to walk, putting his little body thru it, to try to understand by experiencing it. A knack for ...
(#18) Mr. Wint
19. Ilse Steppat
Actress | On Her Majesty's Secret Service
Ilse Steppat was born on November 30, 1917 in Barmen, Germany. She was an actress, known for On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Marriage in the Shadows (1947) and The Blue Swords (1949). She was married to Max Nosseck. She died on December 21, 1969 in West Berlin, West Germany.
(#19) Irma Bunt
20. John Hollis
Actor | Flash Gordon
John Hollis was born on November 12, 1927 in Fulham, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Flash Gordon (1980), Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Superman II (1980). He was married to Sheila Forrester and Gabrielle Hamilton. He died on October 18, 2005 in Richmond ...
(#20) Ernst Stavro Blofeld #5
21. Michael Lonsdale
Actor | The Day of the Jackal
Tall, bearded, heavy-set Anglo-French character actor, best known internationally for playing Deputy Commissioner Claude Lebel in The Day of the Jackal (1973) and Bond villain Hugo Drax in Moonraker (1979). The son of an English army officer (Edward Lonsdale-Crouch) and a Franco-Irish mother (...
(#21) Hugo Drax
22. Louis Jourdan
Actor | Gigi
Louis Jourdan was born Louis Robert Gendre in Marseille, France to Yvonne (née Jourdan) and hotel owner Henry Gendre. He was educated in France, Britain, and Turkey. He trained as an actor with René Simon at the École Dramatique. He debuted on screen in 1939, going on to play cultivated, polished, ...
(#22) Kamal Khan
23. Walter Gotell
Actor | Moonraker
Walter Gotell was born on March 15, 1924 in Bonn, Germany. He was an actor, known for Moonraker (1979), A View to a Kill (1985) and The Spy Who Loved Me (1977). He was married to Celeste F. Mitchell and Yvonne Hills. He died on May 5, 1997 in London, England, UK.
(#23) General Gogol
24. Kabir Bedi
Actor | Octopussy
Kabir Bedi is one of India's most famous international actors, with a career that spans from Bollywood to Hollywood and Europe, in films, television, theatre, and radio.
Kabir's Italian series "SANDOKAN" made him a major star across all of Europe.
He starred in one of the world's most-watched TV ...
(#24) Gobinda
25. Anthony Dawson
Actor | Dial M for Murder
Long-faced, emaciated-looking character actor with a thin mustache and an impeccable English accent, Anthony Dawson was typecast in a variety of villainous roles in the 1950s and 1960s.
He was born Anthony Douglas Gillon Dawson in Edinburgh, Scotland, to Ida Violet (Kittel) and Eric Francis Dawson. ...
(#25) Professor R.J. Dent
26. Vladek Sheybal
Actor | Red Dawn
Looking back at his filmography, it isn't difficult to imagine Vladek Sheybal in a scene, lobbing Molotov cocktails at advancing German troops, against a backdrop of war-torn Warsaw. However, this part of his life played out for real. A member of the Polish underground, he was twice captured and ...
(#26) Kronsteen
27. Toshirô Suga
Actor | Moonraker
Toshirô Suga was born on August 22, 1950 in Tokyo, Japan. He is an actor, known for Moonraker (1979), Tout dépend des filles... (1980) and Charlots connection (1984).
(#27) Chang
28. Eric Pohlmann
Actor | The Return of the Pink Panther
Born in Vienna. Studied at Max Reinhardt School. Early years as entertainer at Reiss Bar in Vienna. Often appeared at still-existing Raimund-Theater. Met wife, Liselotte, on stage in Brno (now Czech Republic). She escaped to London in 1938, he in 1939, where they married that year. Frequent ...
(#28) Ernst Stavro Blofeld
29. Richard Loo
Actor | The Man with the Golden Gun
One of the most familiar Asian character actors in American films of the 1930s and 1940s, Richard Loo was most often stereotyped as the Japanese enemy flier, spy or interrogator during the Second World War. Chinese by ancestry and Hawaiian by birth, Loo spent his youth in Hawaii, then moved to ...
(#29) Hai Fat
30. Curd Jürgens
Actor | The Spy Who Loved Me
Curd Jürgens (commonly billed as "Curt Jurgens" in anglophone countries) was one of the most successful European film actors of the 20th Century. He was born Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens on December 13, 1915, in Solln, Bavaria, in Hohenzollern Imperial Germany, a subject of Kaiser ...
(#30) Karl Stromberg
31. Julian Glover
Actor | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Julian Wyatt Glover was born on March 27, 1935 in Hampstead, London, England, to Honor Ellen Morgan (Wyatt), a BBC journalist, and Claude Gordon Glover, a BBC radio producer. He is of English, Scottish and Welsh ancestry. Primarily a classical stage actor, Glover trained at the National Youth ...
(#31) Aristotle Kristatos
32. Michael Gothard
Actor | Lifeforce
Best remembered in Britain for the television series Arthur of the Britons (1972), Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) and as the villain in For Your Eyes Only (1981). His break into films came with Don Levy's Herostratus (1967). His career was intermittently successful, interspersing notable ...
(#32) Emile Leopold Locque
33. John Wyman
Actor | For Your Eyes Only
John Wyman was born on July 20, 1944 in the United Kingdom. He is an actor, known for For Your Eyes Only (1981), The Fourth Arm (1983) and Equus (1977).
(#33) Eric Kriegler
34. Telly Savalas
Actor | Kojak
Of Greek descent on both sides, the son of immigrants, Savalas was a soldier during World War II, although most of his enlistment records were destroyed in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1973. He later studied psychology at Columbia University under the ...
(#34) Ernst Stavro Blofeld #3
35. Charles Gray
Actor | Diamonds Are Forever
The son of a surveyor, Charles Gray was born and raised in Queen's Park, Bournemouth. As a young actor, he received his vocal training from the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon and at the Old Vic, having long abandoned his first job as clerk for a real estate agent. His voice was to...
(#35) Ernst Stavro Blofeld #4
36. Steven Berkoff
Actor | Octopussy
Highly acclaimed English actor, playwright, author and director continues to set the benchmark in stunning, intense performances on both stage and screen. Berkoff was born in Stepney, London in August 1937 and received dramatic arts training in both Paris and London and then moved on to performing ...
(#36) General Orlov
37. Woody Allen
Writer | Annie Hall
Woody Allen was born on November 30, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in The Bronx, NY, the son of Martin Konigsberg and Nettie Konigsberg. He has one younger sister, Letty Aronson. As a young boy, he became intrigued with magic tricks and playing the clarinet, two hobbies that he continues today.
Allen ...
(#37) Dr. Noah/Jimmy Bond 007
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