10 Villainous Performances From Actors Who Also Played Jesus

The stoic and weathered Max von Sydow has played many complicated figures through his long career in film, from Father Merrick in The Exorcist to the tortured Tore in Bergman’s The Virgin Spring. One of his most challenging was playing Jesus in The Greatest Story Ever Told.

A true epic in every sense of the word, directed by Hollywood great George Stevens, the film is filled with beautifully shot and strikingly performed moments from Jesus’ life, including the sermon on the mount, meeting John the Baptist, and the crucifixion.

From the selfless son of God who sacrificed his life to save others, von Sydow eventually went on to play an allegorical version of the Devil in a Stephen King adaptation.

In Needful Things, he plays shop owner Leland Gaunt, a man who can fulfill his customers’ deepest desires, but he does so at too high a cost. Starting as small and seemingly harmless pranks, he begins to demand more and more of his clients until it escalates to property damage, horrible violence, and eventually murder.