8. Anthony Hopkins
Anthony Hopkins has over 100 acting roles to his credit and has done everything from Shakespeare to superhero films. In and among all those characters, he has brought a handful of icons to life. Probably one of, if not the best role that hes known for, is Hannibal Lecter which Hopkins has played on three separate occasions in Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal and Red Dragon. His portrayal of the cannibalistic serial killer was good enough to get him the best actor Oscar in 1991. Despite the fact hes on screen for very little of the films running time, he created one of cinemas scariest and most enduring villains. Seven years after Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins took on the role of the masked vigilante Zorro. A bit of a change from the type of characters wed been used to seeing him portray, he became an action hero of sorts, albeit again for not much of the films running time. At the start of the film, Hopkins is Zorro who gets imprisoned by his nemesis. After escaping years later, he hands over the reins to Antonio Banderas and trains him up to be his successor. More recently Anthony Hopkins joined the Marvel universe by playing Thors dad, Odin, a role he will reprise this year in Thor: The Dark World. The setting of Thors home world of Asgard, coupled with Kenneth Branaghs direction led to Odin being a very serious, grandiose character which Hopkins more than did credit. Other noteworthy mentions are a couple of historical characters which hes played a former US president in Nixon and a legendary film director in the recent film Hitchcock.