10 Respected Actors Who Completely Hammed It Up To Play Flamboyant Villains

4. Robert De Niro As Max Cady - Cape Fear

"Ooh ooh! I got the all-over fidgets on that one; you've really shaken me up, I'm shivering all over!" Robert De Niro there, undoing all the subtle character-building he did throughout the 70s and 80s as Cape Fear's Max Cady, a character so absurd he seems completely artificial from the first frame to the last. And he features in a Martin Scorsese movie, no less. Recently released from prison, De Niro's Cady is heavy-ripped and tatted to the nines; he quotes the bible and he knows the law - clearly, he's ready to make some friends. Which he does, with a local drunk girl whom he kidnaps then bites a chunk out of (her cheek, to be more specific) before he assaults her in a disturbing midway scene. What is Robert De Niro's accent in Cape Fear? Why is he built like a rodeo bull? Why did Martin Scorsese let De Niro play Cady in such an overblown manner? These are just a few of the many questions you'll be asking yourself should you ever experience Cape Fear, Scorsese's enjoyably pulpy remake of the 1962 thriller. De Niro isn't 'good' in it by the standard definition of the word, but he is 'interesting'.