1. Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest)
There aren't enough negative adjectives in the Oxford English Dictionary to appropriately describe Nurse Ratched, the truly hateful nurse from the 1975 classic One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Hauntingly played by Louise Fletcher, Ratched is one of the most positively cold and conniving female characters in the history of cinema. Whilst Jack Nicholson's performance as protagonist Randle McMurphy is admirable, it's Fletcher as Ratched who truly steals the picture, exerting a totalitarian reign on the film's mental health facility with a petty sneer. Patronising to the point where it becomes pure evil, Ratched's cruel treatment of others is all-the-more unsettling given how she is in a position of trust. But instead of caring for the poor, defenceless patients, the nurse grinds them down to a nub, casually humiliating them at every opportunity. Fletcher has since declared that the character of Ratched is too cruel for her to even watch anymore, which just about says it all. Which movie characters do you find truly hateful? Let us know in the comments below.
