Greatest Femme Fatales in Cinema History
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10. Drew Barrymore
Barrymore revealed that she was no longer the little girl from E.T. with her role in 1992's Poison Ivy, playing a trashy teen who appears out of nowhere and moves in with dweeby Sylvie (Sara Gilbert). In no time, Ivy has seduced Sylvie's dad (Tom Skerritt, pictured), offed her mom (Cheryl Ladd), and pretty much destroyed Sylvie's life. She's a figure out of a nightmare — or is she just a projection of Sylvie's id, acting out her darkest Oedipal impulses? Barrymore proved so transfixing in this film that she soon landed the role of a real-life lethal Lolita in the TV movie The Amy Fisher Story.
9. Rita Hayworth
Even with her glorious auburn locks bobbed and dyed blonde, Hayworth is luminous and otherworldly as Elsa in The Lady From Shanghai (1947). In chivalrous, violent-tempered sailor Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles, left, Hayworth's estranged off-screen husband and the film's director), Elsa finds the ideal patsy for an incredibly convoluted murder scheme involving her crippled husband (Everett Sloane) and his law partner. After the famous climax in a funhouse hall of mirrors, the understandably bewildered O'Hara muses, ''Maybe I'll live so long that I'll forget her. Maybe I'll die trying.''
8. Renee Zellwenger
Some fatal femmes seduce a man or two as part of their murder plots, but Roxie Hart seduces the entire Windy City in Chicago (2002). With the help of slick lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere), she portrays herself as a victim, becomes a media darling, upstages a more seasoned performer (Catherine Zeta-Jones' Velma, a nightclub singer and fellow murder defendant), and even gets her hapless husband (John C. Reilly) to take the heat for her. It's easy to forget that she actually shot her lover out of pique after he admitted he was just using her for sex. Of course, she was using him for fame, and in a perverse way, she gets what she wanted. Guess she had it coming.
7. Kim Novak
In 1958's Vertigo, Novak's haunted — and haunting — Madeleine destroys James Stewart's life not once but twice. His sleuth Scottie tries to save her from what appears to be a ghostly possession, but it's she who's entrapped him, setting up the acrophobic detective to take the fall in a murder plot. Later, the shattered Scottie miraculously finds her again (or is it her double?), but obsession gets in the way, and history repeats itself. In both incarnations, Novak is a woman of mystery, alluring but unreachable. No wonder Stewart falls for her.
6. Annette Benning
Most femmes fatales preserve their mystery by leaving something to the imagination. Not Bening's Myra Langtry in The Grifters (1990). In the performance that made Bening a star, her Myra is brazenly sexual, not at all shy about parading around naked or trading sex for money (or jewelry, or rent). Yet Myra's still a mystery, especially to her boyfriend, fellow con artist Roy (John Cusack), who has no idea how out of his depth he is when he gets involved with her. Her signature is her giggle, an expression not just of pleasure and delight, but also of gleefulness over how helpless and predictable men are around her.
(source: Entertainment Weekly) -
5. Nicole Kidman
In 1995's To Die For, Nicole Kidman's small-town weather girl Suzanne Stone Maretto wants to be a national TV star in the worst way, and she gets her wish when her murder trial becomes a media circus. Kidman gives her a comical but chilling edge; she plays Suzanne as a perky Barbie doll with a frozen smile. She'll do anything for fame, including seducing a naïve teen (Joaquin Phoenix) into killing her husband (Matt Dillon). Fittingly, To Die For was the first movie that showed Kidman was not just then-husband Tom Cruise's arm candy but a skilled actress who deserved to be a star on her own merits.
4. Jane Greer
World-weary Robert Mitchum is nobody's fool, but in 1947's Out of the Past, he makes the mistake of getting entangled with Kathie Moffat (Greer), who entraps him in a snare of sex, embezzlement, and murder. Then he gets involved with her a second time, knowing full well what's in store, because he can't help himself. ''You're no good, and neither am I,'' she tells him. ''That's why we deserve each other.'' Nearly 40 years later, in the pallid 1984 remake Against All Odds, Greer plays the character's mother. She's still striking, still just as dangerous.
3. Kathleen Turner
The old let's-kill-my-husband-for-the-insurance-money plot has been done many times, but no one has given it as much carnal heat as Turner does in her starmaking film debut, 1981's Body Heat. Her character, Matty, finds the perfect patsy in Ned (William Hurt), a seedy lawyer. ''You're not to bright, are you?'' she purrs. ''I like that in a man.'' Soon, the sultry Matty is leading Ned around by the genitals — literally, in one scene, where she reaches below the frame and pulls him along like a puppy on a leash. Ned will pay dearly, of course, but he certainly seems to enjoy the ride while it lasts.
2. Linda Fiorentino
Really, it's not even fair. None of the men in 1994's The Last Seduction is any match for Fiorentino's con artist Bridget Gregory — not her similarly larcenous husband (Bill Pullman), nor the feckless white-collar drone (Peter Berg) she hooks up with after she runs off with hubby's ill-gotten gains. She's smarter and greedier than everyone else, with a gift for improvising her way out of trouble, and unburdened by any trace of regret, compassion, or regard for the lives of others. She should be a hissable villain, but in Fiorentino's performance, the standout role of her career, Bridget is darkly funny, an unlikely superwoman beset on all sides by rubes.
1. Barbara Stanwyck
Stanwyck pretty much invented the femme fatale with her role in 1944's Double Indemnity, a film written by three of the most hard-boiled scribes in Hollywood history: Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain (whose The Postman Always Rings Twice, which has a similar plot, provided an unforgettable femme fatale role for Lana Turner and, later, Jessica Lange). Of all the dames who ever convinced some poor sap to kill her husband for the insurance money, Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson is the slinkiest, the scariest, and the least remorseful. This is a woman who can make shopping at the grocery store seem sexy and dangerous.