10 Best Scenes When Evil Movie Characters Turned Good

Harry Potter's Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) is another terrific example because, technically speaking, he was never actually evil at all - only pretending to be.

Snape is frequently cruel to Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) throughout the series, though the villainous clincher is his murder of Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The obvious assumption is that Snape is now a card-carrying acolyte of Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes), but of course, the final entry in the series stunningly confirms otherwise.

After being mortally wounded by Voldemort's pet snake Nagini, a dying Snape tenderly implores Harry to take his memories to the Pensieve, where he learns that Snape secretly acted as Harry's protector out of love for his mother, Lily, and only killed an already-dying Dumbledore at his own request.

Everything Snape did was ultimately in the service of the bigger picture, and it's an absolute masterstroke of a character turn.