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

3. Guy Pearce As Charlie Rakes - Lawless

Oh, this is a beaut. In Lawless, Guy Pearce is so foppish, such a prohibition-era dandy, that his eyebrows have been scared right off his head. He is Charlie Rakes, Chicago detective and straight-up bad man come to teach a bunch of bootlegging Virginia folk all about the virtues of discipline. Aside from the freaky-looking aforementioned bald patch directly above his eyes, Rakes also wears a bow tie, has a general penchant for feyness and sports a bounder's haircut his unbelievably hostile character probably killed the barber for giving him. This isn't the kind of Guy Pearce we've seen before, the actor usually into his tough guys or straight-up dramatic roles. But for his The Proposition and The Road director John Hillcoat, Pearce abandons subtlety and perhaps even all good reason to become the best thing about Lawless, a villainous copper that's despicable and fascinatingly ridiculous all at the same time. The way he prods Tom Hardy's gangster and hulking Bane-prototype with a glaring sneer fixed on his lips is priceless.