All About Evil

When we asked four dozen Tinseltown women to name their favorite screen villainess, we didn't expect Cruella De Vil to emerge as the best-loved bad girl. Many of their other choices proved to be surprising, too.

1. Carrie Fisher (actress; When Harry Met Sally...; novelist, screenwriter, Postcards From the Edge) ''My favorite villainess is Barbara Stanwyck. She did tons of those roles but my favorite is The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. She was the perfect one to play a role like that because somehow you liked her. I mean, you always knew Joan Crawford was evil, and I always hated Joan Fontaine. But Stanwyck was so classy and charming; she never played it like a villainess. She played it like a seductress, like she was asking you to do her a favor: 'If you really loved me. you'd do this one little thing. Then we could be together. And we'd have money, too.' She presented it like it was a trip down to the market: 'All you have to do is ... murder him.'"

2. Isabella Rossellini (actress, Death Becomes Her, Immortal Beloved)

"Bette Davis, always an inspiration to me. was so great in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? What a rare character she created--so many other actresses wouldn't have had the nerve."

3. Judy Davis (actress, The Ref, The New Age)

"I'd have to say Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard is a real favorite of mine. And don't tell me that character can't be called a villainess--after all, she did kill William Holden."

4. Margaret Cho (actress. "All-American Girl")

"My favorite is Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, but then I wouldn't necessarily call her a villainess. I mean, to me, she was a heroine. She believed so wholeheartedly in herself, and that what she was doing was right. She was so matter-of-fact about her evil ways, but it wasn't really evil--she was just crafty and an opportunist. I try to emu-late her actions. Daily, I try to kind of harden myself to her example, you know, try to become what she was in that film because I do think that all men should pay."

5. Rosie Perez (actress, White Men Can't Jump. Fearless)

"I laughed and laughed at Faye Dunaway playing Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. She was very, very scary--and yet very funny at the same time."

6. Faye Dunaway (actress, Mommie Dearest, Don Juan DeMarco)

"Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon is the first one that pops into my mind. She had this terrible thing of a woman gone wrong, hopelessly wrong, yet what an allure she had!"

7. Bridget Fonda (actress, Point of No Return, It Could Happen to You)

"There was a nun in Black Narcissus who went insane that I liked a lot. The character, played by Kathleen Byron, wasn't really a villainess initially, but she became one."

8. Denise Di Novi (producer, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, Little Women)

"For me, there's one and only one great female villain, and that's Eve Harrington in All About Eve. She is such a complex, brilliant character that she lives on outside the movie--whenever anyone today tries to describe a villain, they invariably say, 'Oh, she's an Eve Harrington,' I suppose some would see her as antifeminist, a bad stereotype in that she's the cliched female who is seductive, catty and manipulative. But throughout history, I'm interested in those women with ambition and life force who feel stunted, who feel that they have no other recourse than to use their so-called 'feminine wiles' to get what they want--your Emma Bovarys, your Cleopatras, Eve Harrington is especially interesting because, as All About Eve makes clear, she does have talent and therefore might have taken another route than the one she chose. But that's what makes a villain, isn't it? That one other little note that makes them a sociopath."

The De Vil Dolls

Our survey reveals that the most popular movie villainess is, hands down, Cruella De Vil from Disney's 101 Dalmatians. Here's what eight celebrated women have to say about why they love her.

9. Miranda Richardson (actress, The Crying Game, Tom & Viv)

"When I was five. I had to be carried screaming from the theater that was playing 101 Dalmatians. I was absolutely terrified by Cruella De Vil. The film is coming back to England this summer, so maybe I'll try seeing it again."

10. Sharon Stone (actress, The Quick and the Dead, Casino)

"I loved Cruella De Vil because she had the best cheekbones."

11. Rose Troche (director, co-screen-writer, co-producer, Go Fish)

"Cruella De Vil is my special favorite because she's the skinniest villainess in movie history--and she's got her own theme song, too."

12. Jane March (actress, The Lover, Color of Night)

"Cruella De Vil is utterly cool--and her makeup is always perfect."

13. Caroline Thompson (screenwriter, The Secret Garden, screenwriter-director, Black Beauty)

"Cruelia De Vil changed my life--she became my role model. She was so awful she was great, and I especially loved that hair!"

14. Helena Bonham Carter (actress, A Room with a View, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein)

"I saw 101 Dalmatians when I was very young. Cruella De Vil didn't really scare me--I don't scare that easily, really--but I thought she was a marvelously evil character."

15. Suzy Amis (actress, The Ballad of Little Jo, Blown Away)

"Cruella De Vil is the kind of villainess you love to hate. I have a four-year-old daughter, however, who doesn't like her.

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