20 Greatest 90s Movie Villains

2. Goodfellas - Tommy DeVito

The same year as his hilarious antagonistic turn in Home Alone, Joe Pesci won a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese's gangster classic. The two performances are similar in certain ways, with both showing Pesci's manic energy on full display, but Pesci plays it in a different key. While he's hysterically wound up as Marv, as Tommy DeVito he's like a human grenade who could go off at any second. He's genuinely terrifying.

Tommy DeVito is a true psychopath, one who gives other psychopaths a bad name. He's a rage-fuelled narcissist, a bully, an emotionless killer, and every time he's on-screen, it seems like he's just a few wrong words away from committing a murder. Everyone around him is more than aware of that, as is shown when protagonist Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) calls him funny in an early scene. Tommy then proceeds to terrify everyone, pretending to take the comment as an insult, and it's evident that the others are holding their breath in fear. 

They had good reason to, for on two separate occasions, Tommy murders other people over a simple insult. Few, if any, film gangsters are nearly as frightening as Tommy DeVito is, so it's sad to say that Tommy was based on a real person. The real Henry Hill has claimed that Tommy DeSimone, the real-life counterpart, was even more vicious, which is difficult to believe.