10 Best Performances In Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Here's the thing with Spike: he's more than just one character. He arrives in Season Two as the new Big Bad, where he's callous, evil and cold. Then he leaves, and when he returns in the first half of Season Three he's a pathetic, love-lorn mess who is at once hilarious and tragic. When he returns in Season Four, where he becomes a main character for the remainder of the show, he's funny, dramatic and has excellent chemistry with everyone he shares a scene with.

No one could play Spike like James Marsters. He perfectly balanced the idea that, without a soul, Spike is an evil and proud monster who takes pleasure in violence and pain, but he also manages to make him endearing; he feels weirdly innocent and almost normal.

Season Seven is Marsters' best in terms of acting, though. After he gets his soul back at the end of Season Six, Spike becomes broken, haunted, twisted and crushed. His speech in "Beneath You" is nothing short of extraordinary, and his speech (he does these well) at the show's end to Buffy is also beautifully performed.

Spike is clever, sarcastic, funny, sexy, violent, cruel and romantic, and though these seem like impossible traits to balance, James Marsters does it with ease. And thanks to the best character arc in the show, he has plenty of opportunities to prove why he's the best actor in the series.