10 Female Villains We Love To Hate
Everyone loves to watch a great female villain. Whether they are clawing their way to the top of the corporate ladder, like Wilhelmina in Ugly Betty, or keeping a man captive after a chance encounter, like Leidy in the erotic thriller Leidy’s New Boyfriend, these women will do whatever it takes to get what they want. And though they make us want to cringe, curse, cry, roll our eyes, and throw stuff at the screen, we love every minute of it.
What is it about a good female villain that makes us want to watch them wreak havoc on whatever poor, unsuspecting sole, male or female, is in their path? The fact of the matter is… we need them. We can’t have a successful Hero without a successful Villain. Every hero needs a villain to stand in the way of their goal. Moreover, if there were no villains, who would we gossip about at work? In short, without villains, the world would be a very boring place. Luckily, Hollywood produces some of the most villainous female venom on earth to satisfy our insatiable “love to hate” appetites.1. The Wicked Witch of the West – The Wizard of OzHer name speaks volumes. In the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland as the adorable Dorothy, Margaret Hamilton brews up her own batch of sinister wickedness as the “Wicked Witch of the West.” The Wicked Witch of the West is practically synonymous with evil, although, she might have gotten a bad rap. Maybe she was just having a bad day. After all, her sister had just been killed by an unidentified flying house. Can’t a girl grieve without being called a witch? Needless to say, she lived up to her name by hunting down poor Dorothy and her loveable dog Toto. Along the way, the witch conjured all manner of evil relying on her army of flying monkeys to carry out her wicked deeds. Like any good villain, she was relentless until she lived up to her ominous words, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too.”2. Miranda Priestly – The Devil Wears PradaThe 2006 hit, The Devil Wears Prada, based on the Lauren Weisberger novel of the same name, took us on a journey to the ugly side of Fashion. When a naïve young woman (played by Anne Hathaway) moves to New York and lands her dream job working at a popular fashion magazine, all hell breaks loose in the form of her boss, the ruthless, sarcastic, yet undeniably fashion-fabulous, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). We cringed as we watched Miranda walk all over her well-meaning assistant in her seemingly pitchfork-spiked stiletto heels, but we reveled in every minute of the torture!3. Omarosa – The Apprentice: Season OneWe first encountered this cutthroat corporate diva on season one of Donald Trump’s reality show The Apprentice. This savvy business woman, who only needs one name, wormed her way into our hearts week after week with her cunning, confrontational and relentless tactics. Despite her prickly personality or perhaps because of it, Omarosa managed to turn her fifteen minutes of fame into an all-out media takeover with a subsequent appearance on The Celebrity Apprentice, countless talk show appearances, and her own reality dating show (where she tries to make the ultimate merger). Omarosa, the media mogul, has even authored a book aptly titled, “The Bitch Switch: Knowing How to Turn It On and Off.” Love her, hate her or outright can’t stand her, Omarosa is the quintessential reality TV villain that keeps us watching.4. Wilhelmina Slater – Ugly Betty
To state it plainly, O-Ren-Ishii is one bad bitch. And by bad, I mean oh so good. O-Ren-Ishii, wonderfully played by Lucy Lui, is a former member of an assassination squad and is now the head of the Tokyo Yakuza. This villainess, from Quentin Tarentino’s 2003 box office smash hit Kill Bill: Vol. 1, was at the top of the Bride’s (Uma Thurman) hit list upon waking from her coma – a coma that came as a result of an attack by Bill and the members of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. But settling this score proves difficult. O-Ren-Ishii is really good at being evil. When one of her fellow crime bosses, Boss Tanaka, expresses disdain for her mixed half Japanese, half Chinese-American heritage, O-Ren-Ishii calmly runs across the conference table, brandishes her sword and proceeds to cut off his head. But she can’t be held completely accountable for her evilness. At the age of nine, she witnessed the brutal murder of her parents at the hands of Japanese crime leader Boss Matsumoto. But don’t cry for her, Argentina. At age eleven, she posed as a child prostitute and murdered him and two of his henchmen while in bed. Payback’s a bitch and so is O-Ren-Ishii.8. Nurse Ratched – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s NestThe role of Nurse Ratched in the 1975 drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest won Louise Fletcher the Oscar for Best Actress and garnered her the title of fifth worst movie villain by the American Film Institute. This tyrannical nurse lords over the psychiatric ward of an Oregon mental institution. Cold and heartless, Nurse Ratched never raises her voice to her all-male patients. Instead, she controls the men by increasing their pills, abusing their egos and manipulating their minds. A rambunctious and often rebellious patient, R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), reaches his breaking point when Nurse Ratched shows no remorse for the suicide of a young patient who kills himself after she publicly humiliates him. McMurphy goes into a violent rage and nearly chokes Nurse Ratched to death. All of us thought she had it coming.9. Cruella De Vil – 101 DalmationsGlenn Close returns to her wicked ways in the 1996 live-action remake of the Disney animated classic 101 Dalmatians as Cruella De Vil. Cruella has no time for the petty cares of this wretched world, the least of which are marriage and family. In her words, “more good women have been lost to marriage than to war, famine, disease and disaster.” Instead she focuses all of her energy on her one true love: fur. Although I am sure PETA would beg to differ, the love of fur in and of itself does not make someone inherently evil. What makes Cruella’s fetish particularly fiendish is the fact that she has her sights set on an innocent group of Dalmatian puppies to help her make her next fashion statement. Fashion sense aside, anyone who would harm innocent puppy dogs must be stopped. With her sharp wit and even sharper tongue, it was fun watching this devilish diva get her just desserts.10. The Queen – Snow WhiteThe Queen, voiced by Lucille La Verne, in the 1937 Disney animated feature Snow White is the quintessential fairytale villainess. In what can be described as the ultimate mother/daughter rivalry, the Queen sends her henchmen to hunt and kill her beautiful stepdaughter, Snow White. When attempts to kill the princess in the woods are unsuccessful, she resorts to dressing as an old hag and gives Snow White a poisoned apple. All this because a magical mirror told her that Snow White was cuter than her. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Didn’t anyone ever tell the Queen not to ask questions you don’t want answered? Apparently not. God forbid she find out that she was not ranked the most evil of them all either! She was ranked #10 on the 50 Best Villains of All Time list by the American Film Institute.
