4. Dennis Hopper - Blue Velvet
The essence of Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth is nightmarish. His terrifying gaze, his sinister voice and sexual sadomasochism make him one of the most frightening characters to ever grace a cinema screen. In David Lynch's twisted world of Blue Velvet, Frank is the demented sociopath that is tormented by Roy Orbison's In Dreams and takes delight in cruelty and suffering. As to be expected with David Lynch, Blue Velvet is unimaginably dark and contains a mounting sense of menace, portrayed through Hopper's psychotic creep. As he reaches climax during his rape of Dorothy, you realise you've met a new cinematic horror that's going to play with your mind. Dennis Hopper got the role of Frank Booth by telling David Lynch that he was Frank and it's impossible to believe otherwise. Every other word Booth says is profanity, driving the feeling of unstable intensity to heights that had never been seen before. Hopper's performance is genuinely surprising and his performance as Frank Booth is one of the most unnerving and startling in American cinematic history.