If The Film Experience were its own media empire the first thing we would do is some sort of annual gallery of celebrities a la Vanity Fair or the New York Times. For this year's New York Times video gallery ["Vamps, Crooks and Killers" (photos) "Touch of Evil" (video)] the Times has famous actors playing famous film baddies or villainous archetypes. We've mentioned we love this actors as actors business muchly before. It always thrills. 

Here's Glenn Close as Theda Bara the vamp and Viola Davis as Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) for appetizers.

The Close image reminds us that Glenn has always been thisclose to being a cartoon character who just happens to be made of flesh and blood. That's how most iconic film stars and characters come across... at least after decades in the pop cultural air, though it didn't take Close that long to achieve it.

Doesn't the Nurse Viola Davis Ratched immediately make you want to see her in a villainous role? It hadn't even occurred to me before but it'd be super scary to watch her soulfulness curdle in some choice role. I bet she'd be great. On her performance in this video she says...

I tried to channel all the parts of myself that are probably not pretty. That are not necessarily nice."

Rooney Mara, Michael Shannon, Kirsten Dunst, Brad Pitt and Mia Wasikowska, after the jump...