The only non-human character on this list, Alicia Vikander's Ava is an AI robot under a test to identify whether or not she can be passed off as a human - and more specifically (and importantly, given the context of Ex Machina), a woman. Throughout the film Ava is an eerie presence, by turns inquisitive and sensual, abrupt and manipulative. There are suggestions that she's actually a femme fatale, and that holds up: she lets Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson, who seems destined to have his heart broken by women on this list) believe that she likes him, luring him into her trap before abandoning him and leaving him to die in her designer's (Oscar Isaac's Nathan) Kubrickian compound. Expertly performed by Alicia Vikander, the character of Ava is just as memorable for how she acts and moves, balancing the rigidness of a robot with attempts at femininity. She is svelte, but also bereft of little female ticks (the ability to play with her hair, for instance); at one moment unmistakably a woman, at others undeniably a machine. Vikander has said that her attempts to play Ava as physically perfect led to a more robotic grace, and since what makes people human is "flaws and consistency", she had to throw in some "offbeats" to add the feminine yin to the artificial yang: "I wanted her to be a girl, but I also wanted her to have some glitches." The result of that is a brilliant character hard to pin down; one who bridges the gap between what is real and what is artificial by blurring the lines that define each.
