10 Actors Who Perfectly Played Both Heroes And Villains

4. Samuel L Jackson - The Avengers & Unbreakable

The self-styled baddest motherf*cker in Hollywood can be whatever he wants to be on screen, and he often takes to that allowance with gusto (even in films that appear to be slightly beneath him). When he's best, he's usually bristling with intensity and leaves a trail of obscenities behind him like footprints stomped on the landscapes of his films.

Curiously, though, his best heroic performance and his best villainous one (he's played both ends of the spectrum and many, many points elsewhere on it a lot of times) aren't quite as intense as usual (or at least not as you'd expect form him) and neither is particularly profane.

In The Avengers, he's basically the hero all of the heroes look up to - the granddaddy of the MCU, who you know will smack you with a cane if you misbehave, but who is fundamentally pulling for the good guys. While in Unbreakable he's a fragile, more cerebral figure, imprisoned in a failing body, more quirky and more terrifying for his otherness.