8. David Carradine, Kill Bill Vol. 2
Although featured mostly out of frame for the first installment of Kill Bill, Carradine's Bill is prominently featured in the second chapter and he delivers a masterful performance as a lover, a leader, a teacher and a father. Kill Bill Vol. 2 contains scene after scene of Carradine, quiet and reserved always, giving Bill so much more depth than any one movie villain has been given. By the end of the film, Carradine's performance is so great and his character is so larger than life we're actually okay if The Bride (Uma Thurman) doesn't kill him after all. In a terrific melding of Tarantino's words and Carradine's smooth style, he delivers a brilliant monologue near the end of the film about the mythology of heroes and their alto egos. It is a direct parallel to that of the normal life both Bill and The Bride tried to live, even though they were nothing but a couple of natural born killers at heart. After the success of the Kill Bill films, Carradine continued appearing in low budget action films in similar roles. He died in 2009 of accidental asphyxiation.