It’s the best of the worst.

The 20 greatest James Bond villains, ranked from bad to Blofeld

It’s the best of the worst.

By Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman

Jordan Hoffman is a writer at **, mostly covering nostalgia. He has been writing about entertainment since 2007.

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September 16, 2026 6:27 p.m. ET

Silva (wants revenge), Blofeld (wants control), Xenia Onatopp (wants to kill you with her thighs). Credit:

Francois Duhamel/Columbia Pictures; Express Newspapers/Hulton Archive/Getty; Keith Hamshere/Getty

James Bond, the finest British export since the Magna Carta, wouldn’t be half as exciting if it weren’t for his foes. (And codename 003.5 is hardly as cool-sounding as 007!)

Luckily, the list of crafty and depraved baddies in the Bond franchise is as strong as a vodka martini. And since we’ve no clue when the next Bond will be cast — let alone when another movie in the marvelous franchise will hit theaters — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to definitively rank the top 20 James Bond villains for all your arguing needs.

Some Bond villains are masterminds in an elaborate, Ken Adam-designed underground (or underwater) lair. Others are merely henchmen/henchwomen sent out to do the chief baddie’s dirty work, almost always to meet their doom. We’ve decided to let evil be equal with evil and consider both puppet masters and puppets as villains.

But that makes for a twist. Many a henchperson has ultimately seen the error of their ways and switched sides to aid Bond, MI6, Her Majesty the Queen, the American Way, EON Productions, etc., etc. It sometimes happens late in the game, but it still counts as a rejection of villainy. As such, you will not, repeat, *not* see Pussy Galore, May Day, or even Jaws — who took *two *movies (and the love of a good spacewoman) to finally see the light — on this list.

And now, cue the gun barrel.

Kamal Khan (Octopussy)

Don’t worry, he’s not going to break into song with Maurice Chevalier.

Oscar Abolafia/TPLP/Getty

There’s no point in avoiding the fact that there’s much about the 007 franchise that wouldn’t pass muster today. (Perhaps one day we’ll list the British secret agent’s “20 most problematic moments.”) To that end, here’s Louis Jourdan, the French actor known to many as the young lover in the Oscar-winning musical *Gigi *(and later as, of all things, a mad scientist in *Swamp Thing*), playing an Afghan prince.

In *Octopussy*, Jourdan’s Kamal Khan is in cahoots with an evil Soviet general plotting to detonate a nuclear bomb at a U.S. Air Force base under cover of a traveling circus and a jewel-smuggling operation involving circus clowns and stolen Fabergé eggs. Khan is also a gamesman, which means his first tête-à-tête with Roger Moore’s Bond is over a backgammon board.

Dr. No (Dr. No)

Dr. No’s mother never warned him about putting a plastic bag over his head.

United Artists/Getty

The first Bond villain on film is still eerie, even if he is, as with Kamal Khan, a bit dated. The Montreal-born actor Joseph Wiseman played the half-Chinese, half-German antagonist, and the 1962 production did not shy away from racially insensitive makeup.

Dr. No’s master plan was to use a radio beam from his secret base in Jamaica to disrupt American rocket launches, and thus cause Cold War mayhem on behalf of the unaligned terrorist group SPECTRE. He lost his hands due to radiation exposure and has experimental prosthetic replacements, so if you want to say that Sean Connery’s first villain is also a cyborg, go right ahead.

Lyutsifer Safin (No Time to Die)

Rami Malek, the first and only ‘Gilmore Girls’ guest star to play a Bond villain.

The most recent Bond villain is one of the best, and certainly has one of the coolest names. Lyutsifer Safin, responsible for the death of Daniel Craig’s Bond until future productions give us a new version, was a twisted, brooding lunatic determined to reduce the world’s population using nanobot technology stolen from SPECTRE. Rami Malek played him with an eerie and cold style — marking the first time James Bond went up against both an Oscar and Emmy winner at the same time. Safin’s HQ was on a secret island somewhere, a nod to the classic era.

Bambi and Thumper (Diamonds Are Forever)

Bambi and Thumper (any similarity to actual Disney persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental).

United Artist/Getty

With names that cheekily borrowed from the Walt Disney Company’s IP, Bambi and Thumper were acrobatic henchwomen working as bodyguards for the Howard Hughes-coded billionaire Willard Whyte in *Diamonds Are Forever*. One could, in a way, interpret the scantily dressed Lola Larson and Trina Parks as feminist icons, as they get a few minutes of screen time beating the snot out of Connery’s Bond before getting tossed in a swimming pool. (Furthermore, Parks was the first Black woman to have a significant role in a 007 film.)

Both performers brought extensive movement backgrounds to the roles: Parks was a dancer and choreographer, while Larson was a gymnast. The script originally had Whyte deploying men, but director Guy Hamilton witnessed the U.S. tumbling team and the ol’ idea bulb went off.

Watching every James Bond movie in order, from Connery to Craig

An Agent of Change: How each James Bond actor personified his era

Le Chiffre (Casino Royale)

Mads Mikkelsen? As a bad guy? Well now I’ve seen everything.

Jay Maidment/Columbia Pictures

When Daniel Craig took over as 007 in 2006, audiences responded well to the film’s darker, more brooding tenor. Case in point: Mads Mikkelsen’s Le Chiffre, a loathsome banker and financier for terrorists who sets *Casino Royale*’s action* *in motion. Unlike the baddies in the zanier Bond pictures, Le Chiffre isn’t out for world domination — he just wants money. This down-to-earth motivation makes him all the more frightening, especially when he periodically bleeds from his eye thanks to a rather symbolically apt malfunctioning tear duct.

Of note! In 1967 there was a non-canonical version of *Casino Royale *played for laughs starring, among others, Peter Sellers and Woody Allen. This very different Le Chiffre was played by none other than Orson Welles, who is great in his own way.

Zao (Die Another Day)

Diamonds are a henchman’s best friend.

Keith Hamshere/MGM

Rick Yune’s Zao was Col. Moon’s henchman in *Die Another Day*, the last of the Pierce Brosnan-era Bond films and, along with Halle Berry’s Jinx and Madonna’s theme song, the most memorable part of the movie. Zao is a North Korean baddie involved in weapons and jewelry smuggling, and an early run-in with 007 leaves him with diamonds embedded in his face.

Later, Bond interrupts Zao’s high-tech DNA replacement surgery — no matter what, this guy is gonna be at least partially sparkly. It makes for a very dynamic look, adding significant flair to the 2002 picture.

Mr. Big/Dr. Kananga (Live and Let Die)

The only crew member of the Nostromo to also go up against James Bond.

Screen Archives/Getty

Depending on your point of view, the first Roger Moore Bond picture, *Live and Let Die*, is either soaked in uncomfortable Caribbean and African American stereotypes, or it is a cheerful “yes, and…” to the great blaxploitation pictures of the era. Either way, the great Yaphet Kotto is both the nefarious island dictator Dr. Kananga and Harlem gangster Mr. Big. (Unlike many Bond villains with secret guises, this one actually fools the audience at first.)

He also meets his maker in one of the most bizarre ways not just for a 007 picture but in all of mainstream cinema, blown up like a balloon with a gas pellet stuffed in his mouth during a fight in a shark pool.

Red Grant (From Russia with Love)

Red Grant, probably right after saying something like, “Allow me to slip into something more comfortable”.

ullstein bild/ullstein bild via Getty

And speaking of sharks! Before he was Quint, Robert Shaw was Red Grant, a tough block of cement trained by SPECTRE to use the brutest of brute force to kill James Bond. He almost succeeds, too, thanks to his enormous physique and the wire garrote he sneakily hides in his wristwatch.

He’s outmaneuvered by Connery’s Bond, of course, in one of the most legendary of all 007 moments — tipping his hand while disguised by ordering red wine with fish. James Bond may have a license to kill, but that doesn’t make him less of a gentleman, and when he spots someone acting uncouth in the dining car, he knows something is up!

Stromberg (The Spy Who Loved Me)

Curt Jurgens, Barbara Bach, and Roger Moore in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’.

Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty

There will never be another 1977: *Star Wars*, *Close Encounters of the Third Kind*, *Saturday Night Fever*, *Smokey and the Bandit*, *Annie Hall*, Steely Dan’s *Aja*, first albums by Talking Heads, Sex Pistols, Television — and it was the year when Roger Moore-era Bond really leaned into being gloriously idiotic. Hence, *The Spy Who Loved Me*, with its Carly Simon theme song, outrageous ski slope pre-title sequence, and Curt Jurgens as Karl Stromberg, a bonkers shipping magnate scheming to trigger nuclear war and rebuild civilization from a spider-shaped headquarters at the bottom of the sea.

Scaramanga (The Man with the Golden Gun)

OK, he’s not actually Dracula in this but how cool would it be if Bond fought Dracula.

Silver Screen Collection/Getty

In a remarkable casting coup, legendary British actor Christopher Lee, of *Dracula* and later *Lord of the Rings *fame, sinks his teeth into the part of Francisco Scaramanga, a former circus performer and trick-shot artist now working as an assassin-for-hire from the safety of (naturally) a private island. His showdown with Moore’s Bond is particularly nice, because he’s presented as the great British spy’s mirror image — hence a big “house of mirrors” finale.

Scaramanga’s henchman Nick Nack was played by Hervé Villechaize, later made famous on a TV show *also *set on an island, *Fantasy Island*. Of further note: Maud Adams, who plays Andrea Anders, would later return to the franchise as the titular Octopussy.

Raoul Silva (Skyfall)

Silva engaging his foe in a bit of light, ahem, Bondage.

Francois Duhamel/Columbia Pictures

Javier Bardem brought his typically chilling and unsettling style to the Daniel Craig-era foe Silva, a former MI6 agent who was sacrificed by Judi Dench’s M during the Hong Kong handover in exchange for six captured agents and a peaceful transition. Now he’s back, he’s angry, and his face is disfigured as a result. Working from a secret island base (naturally), Silva has orchestrated a grand scheme, but it’s not about world domination *or *personal wealth. He just wants revenge against M, and that’s something 007 can’t allow.

Xenia Onatopp (GoldenEye)

Look, if you’re gonna die anyway, there are a lot worse ways to go.

Keith Hamshere/Getty

Pierce Brosnan’s stint as James Bond got off to a memorable start in *GoldenEye *when he faced off against Xenia Onatopp, a former Soviet fighter pilot working for MI6 agent turned international baddie Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean). As played by Dutch actress Famke Janssen, the former love interest of *Star Trek*’s Captain Picard and future *X-Men *heroine Jean Grey, the ribaldly named Onatopp does much of her assassinating by seductively luring men to their doom and crushing them with her thighs. Those lucky enough to witness this during the film’s initial theatrical run will recall just how bananas audiences went.

Rosa Klebb (From Russia with Love)

Rosa Klebb interrogates Tatiana Romanova in ‘From Russia with Love’.

Screen Archives/Getty

Weirdly, we have not (yet!) talked much about Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the leader of SPECTRE in many of Ian Fleming’s original novels and in several of the movies. Indeed, some of the henchmen listed above ultimately worked for him, as did Rosa Klebb, the fierce, diminutive former Soviet redhead with a poison-tipped blade in her shoe in *From Russia with Love*. Played by Lotte Lenya, she’s either a campy representation of a queer-coded villain worthy of celebration or deeply problematic. (More of that to come on this list.) Either way, she certainly gives Connery’s second Bond picture a memorable secondary villain.

Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die)

Geoffrey Holder as Baron Samedi in ‘Live and Let Die’.

Everett Collection

One of the strangest Bond villains is Geoffrey Holder’s Baron Samedi, a henchman of Yaphet Kotto’s Dr. Kananga/Mr. Big. What’s most remarkable is that the character draws on a preexisting figure from Haitian Vodou, a supernatural figure traditionally depicted with elements of the look seen here, including a top hat, formalwear, and a skull-like face. Use of the figure in the 1973 movie has rubbed many people the wrong way over the years, but Holder, a commanding dancer and choreographer, is mesmerizing to watch.

Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd (Diamonds Are Forever)

They’re more than just friends - they’re friends who kill people together.

United Artist/Getty

As played by Bruce Glover (Crispin’s father) and Putter Smith (a musician with few other acting credits), Wint and Kidd are the wisecracking, sadistic baddies dispatched to eliminate anyone involved in an elaborate diamond-smuggling scheme that eventually leads to Blofeld trying to nuke the world for some reason.

Wint and Kidd romp around the world killing anyone involved in the plot to make sure the trail runs cold, which naturally causes James Bond to find out. Whoopsie! Their methods are strange (like deploying poisonous scorpions), and the two men are not particularly subtle about also being lovers. This is either campy good fun or a troubling demonization of gays, depending on your perspective.

Max Zorin (A View to a Kill)

Max Zorin and May Day aren’t just international terrorists - they’re fashion icons, too.

United Artists/Courtesy Everett Collection

Christopher Walken was the first Oscar winner to play a Bond villain, and he did so with shocking platinum-blonde hair from a blimp above the Golden Gate Bridge. His Max Zorin was a product of Nazi experiments who made a killing investing in microchips and who planned to corner the market by triggering the Hayward and San Andreas faults, wiping out Silicon Valley. Whether he got his idea from Lex Luthor in *Superman *(1978)* *is unclear. Scientists have yet to confirm, but many suspect that it was this performance that turned Walken from a regular actor into one of cinema’s all-time great lunatics.

Oddjob (Goldfinger)

The two most lethal weapons in the Bond canon: Oddjob, and Oddjob’s hat.

Sion Touhig/Sygma/Sygma via Getty

*Goldfinger *was the third James Bond movie and the one that really sent the series into the stratosphere. You can thank Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore, you can thank Shirley Bassey’s theme song, and you can thank Harold Sakata’s turn as the most famous henchman of all, Oddjob.

Sakata, a former weightlifting champ, maintains a remarkable presence on screen (even if he doesn’t say much), but it’s the unusual bowler hat with a sharp-enough-to-cut-marble edge that made him iconic — and set the bar for Bond villains for decades to come.

Auric Goldfinger (Goldfinger)

Just look at Goldfinger’s face, he’s absolutely delighted at his own handiwork.

Screen Archives/Getty

If Oddjob wasn’t cool enough, there was his boss, Auric Goldfinger, who Ian Fleming loosely based on precious metals tycoon Charles Engelhard and named after architect Ernő Goldfinger, whom Fleming disliked. *Goldfinger*’s Goldfinger, played by Gert Fröbe, set the template for the smarmy industrialist who gets by in society but is actually planning some catastrophic scheme alongside a crew of henchpeople. In this case, he plans to irradiate the gold at Fort Knox to inflate the worth of his own reserves, and also to kill James Bond with a slowly moving laser pointed at his crotch. And to make jokes while doing it!

Hugo Drax (Moonraker)

Hugo Drax, captaining his own personal little Death Star in ‘Moonraker’.

United Artists/ Courtesy: Everett Collection

Confession: My appreciation for Hugo Drax has only increased in recent years thanks to a real-life zillionaire who fires rockets into space, has a sprawling brood, and is obsessed with the letter X.

French actor Michael Lonsdale created the perfect follow-up to the underwater mayhem of *The Spy Who Loved Me*. Following the success of *Star Wars*, he sent the Bond franchise to outer space, including a big battle that actually involves laser blasters. Drax’s plan is to kill everyone, then repopulate the world with a hand-picked group of genetically perfect specimens... or something like that. All we can say for sure is that *Moonraker *ends with the finest joke in the entire franchise, with Desmond Llewelyn reporting on a naked Bond and “Dr. Goodhead” returning to Earth, thus “attempting reentry.”

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Blofeld (multiple films)

A devious, megalomaniacal criminal mastermind... and also Blofeld.

Newspapers/Hulton Archive/Getty

Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Christoph Waltz, and a few others we only saw in shadows — these are the actors who brought Ernst Stavro Blofeld, head of SPECTRE and the Joker to Bond’s Bruce Wayne, to life in the EON-produced 007 movies. He rules by fear, he seeds mayhem and destruction, and he routinely cooks up schemes involving extortion, revenge, and world domination, but he also likes cats. (I guess he’s not all bad.)

In *For Your Eyes Only*,* *he was dropped down an enormous industrial smokestack but still came back as Christoph Waltz somehow, which is why no one got too upset when Daniel Craig died in *No Time to Die*. As the old closing credits used to say: James Bond Will Return. And so, likely, will Blofeld.

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