Billy Zane and the Golden Age of the Sleazy ’90s Villain

The 1990s were a golden era for unapologetically terrible movie villains, and nobody embodied that sleazy, over-the-top antagonist better than Billy Zane. He helped define the decade's deliciously creepy bad guys.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the actor "began his career playing an assortment of villains and oddballs" and since then has featured mostly in B movies. But his new film, Waltzing with Brando, has put him back on the public's radar for a stunning performance as Marlon Brando (at the very least, they nailed the classic actor's look). The film releases Sept. 19.

In honor of this comeback, we'd like to look at his most memorable '90s villain roles. He's played a few villains since then (like King Balek in Samson) but these earlier roles exist in that perfect sweet spot that made '90s cinema so entertaining. Bad enough to root against, charismatic enough to watch.

Caledon "Cal" Hockley in Titanic

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Zane's most famous villain role came as Rose's wealthy, controlling fiancé in James Cameron's historical disaster epic. The role earned him an MTV Movie Award nomination for "Best Villain" and a Blockbuster Entertainment Award.

Turner Classic Movies noted he "embellished the character with touches of charm and humanity which resonated far more with audiences than if Hockley had been completely unsympathetic."

Cal genuinely believes he loves Rose and is entitled to a happy life with her, which makes his possessiveness even creepier. He's fun to hate in this one, and his sleaziness persists to the end, when he sneaks aboard a lifeboat using a random child.

Hughie Warriner in Dead Calm

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Zane's breakout villain role came in this Australian thriller alongside Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill, playing a dangerously unhinged man who boards a vacationing couple's yacht. This one was released in 1989, so we're fudging a little to include it.

This performance earned him a Chicago Film Critics Association Award nomination for Most Promising Actor and established his reputation as someone who could make audiences uncomfortable.

Den of Geek wrote of the performance, "Zane leaves you in no doubt that Hughie is a man with serious mental and emotional problems; not just the obvious homicidal tendencies, but the way his reality shifts around him like quicksand."

Zane still developed the character thoroughly.

"They isolated me for about a week and a half before I went to the island," he told Full Empire Promotions. "They had Sam and Nicole. I really appreciated the prep they put into it. The character — he was a victim of trauma. I don't think he was particularly 'out to lunch' before horrific incidents occurred, and I think he lost it when the real law of nature took over, law of man, and [he] was on a sinking boat with a lot of people with a lot of drugs. Then it went really dark really fast, and he thought he was going to die. So we worked from there, from a sense of trauma."

The Collector in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight

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In this horror spin-off from the HBO series, Zane played The Collector, a demonic entity seeking an ancient key to end the world.

Zane remembers the project fondly, telling AV Club, "I loved that movie, Demon Knight. I was just texting with [director Ernest] Dickerson the other day. It's like a starter drug for horror for a lot of fans. I meet them at the cons."

His performance balanced legitimate menace with dark comedy and "gooey" special effects. It's Zane at his most theatrical.

Curtis Zampf in The Believer (2001)

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This one stars a young Ryan Gosling as the leader of a group of skinheads (who is secretly Jewish), and Zane is Curtis Zampf, a New York fascist leader. This was a breakout role for Gosling, so Zane is in supporting mode here, but his ability to portray this character's ideological conflict makes for a complex antagonist.

Screenwriter Henry Bean told Filmmaker Magazine, "I had to invent Theresa Russell and Billy Zane's characters. I thought, if I didn't give this world some sense of respectability, there was no way it could balance against the Jewish world. So I had to make it bigger and better than it was."

We're a little out of the '90s on this one, but as it was still in Zane's heyday, we think it's close enough to count.

Colonel Graham in Posse

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In Mario Van Peebles' Western, Zane plays Colonel Graham, a military commander who betrays his own troops for Spanish gold. After attempting to murder them to cover up the theft, he pursues the heroes across the West.

Once Upon a Time in a Western wrote that "Billy Zane, apparently warming up for his memorable role in Titanic, is certainly villainous" as the "half-crazed" soldier.

Graham loses an eye in the betrayal, creating the obsessed, physically scarred villain the '90s perfected.