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

5. John Cassavetes - Rosemary's Baby

John Cassavetes, that creator of difficult, confrontational dramatic cinema, and one of the founding fathers of independent filmmaking, was acting before he'd established himself as a director with Shadows in 1959. These were, for the most part, bit-parts, however, and Cassavetes' films were already well-established as their own different kind of cinema by the time Cassavetes took on the part of Guy Woodhouse in Roman Polanski's classic horror, Rosemary's Baby. The most evil thing about Guy, actor husband to Mia Farrow's Rosemary, is that he's not outwardly evil whatsoever. Sure, with that half-smile and those eyebrows, Cassavetes definitely looks a bit like a cartoon villain, but there's no overt indication of just how despicable this seemingly average man is until the very end of the film. The close of Rosemary's Baby reveals that Guy, in a classic Faustian pact, has allowed a Satanic cult to unknowingly impregnate his wife with the spawn of the devil. Not because he dislikes his wife or because he wants try out raising Hellboy or anything - he just did it because the cult promised he'd get more acting jobs if he did. Not cool.