8 Terrifying Villains You Didn't Realise Were Played By Great Directors

8. Roman Polanski - Chinatown

Even if you're familiar with what controversial Polish filmmaker and criminal-on-the-run Roman Polanski looks like, there's barely a chance to clock him in Chinatown before he's left Jack Nicholson's face streaming with blood, and you screaming, "OH MY GOD HE ACTUALLY DID IT". Polanski makes only a brief appearance as an unnamed, low-level (literally, he's tiny) hoodlum in his own revisionist noir masterpiece, but the short, sharp cruelty of his Chinatown role lingers long past the credits. Polanski often acted in his own films, but in Chinatown he uses the disadvantages that would prevent him from ever being a real movie star to his own villainous advantage. There's something sinister about Man With Knife's mangled English ("You're a very nosy fellow, kitty cat"); even scarier is the fact he's a short-statured man who's not afraid to stick a knife in the much taller protagonist's face without even blinking. Before you know it, this mysterious gangster has shredded Jake Gittes's (Jack Nicholson) nose, wiped down the bloody knife like he hasn't a care in the world, and walked away, never to be seen in the movie again.