9 Movie Heroes Who Lived Long Enough To Become The Villain

As an actor, it's important to know where you "fit" into the movie business; Steve Buscemi understands that he's not going to pull off a convincing action hero, but he can play "weird" like the best of them. As a result, his filmography is packed with variations of the same character... and for an actor like Buscemi, that's fine.

There are certain actors, however, who spend their careers playing such an endless line of fundamentally "good" characters, that after a while... well, it gets a little boring. At least with someone like Buscemi, his array of freaks and oddballs have range and diversity. When you're constantly playing on variations of the hero (or anti-hero) type, though, it's nowhere near as interesting.

Behold! There is a cure to this repetitiveness, and one that many actors resort to when they realise it's time to do something different: they play a villain. 

Sometimes a notable actor will make a conscious choice to go against everything that audiences expect of them in order to shake things up and reveal new layers to their talents. 

As this list shows, it doesn't always work, but when it does it's a beautiful thing to behold - a welcomed change to a lifetime of heroic deeds...

Whilst developing Once Upon a Time in the West, spaghetti western maestro Sergio Leone was struck with a vision he couldn't shake: what if, at the start of the film, the villain appeared and - his appearance disguised - he proceeded to shoot an innocent child? And what if then, the camera titled up to reveal the killer's face, showing him to be... Henry Fonda!

Leone fulfilled this vision, of course, and it resulted in one of cinema's great moments of subversion.

In choosing an actor associated with countless good guy roles as villainous gunslinger turned businessman Frank, with his blue eyes and kind face, an already horrifying moment is made even more shocking. Fonda had played heaps of noble characters in films such as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts and - most famously - 12 Angry Men, but had never gone full-on baddie.

Nobody was anticipating this unconventional casting, and yet Fonda arguably made for a better screen villain than he did a hero (and it even inspired him to play a few more bad guys in the years afterwards!).