Top Ten James Bond Villains

Dr. No is the original Bond villain, so he’s the perfect person to kick off this list of the ten best Bond villains!

Unlike many of the villains that would come after him, Dr. No is quiet and unassuming. However, this only makes him even more terrifying as a villain.

Dr. No is an agent of the notorious criminal organization Spectre. His radiation experiments for the group led to the loss of his hands, which he replaced with steel prosthetics capable of crushing metal objects.

“The successful criminal brain is always superior. It has to be,” Dr. No once says.

Dr. No proves to be quite the adversary for Bond. Over 60 years later, he remains one of the most memorable Bond villains!

Who could forget Oddjob? He is the bodyguard for the villainous Auric Goldfinger, and he leaves quite an impression!

While Goldfinger is the main villain in this movie, it’s Oddjob who is directly responsible for many of the deaths. Indeed, it’s Oddjob who paints Jill Masterson gold, causing her to die from skin suffocation. He later murders her sister Tilly with his infamous razor-rimmed hat, which he frequently throws at others to instantly kill them.

Oddjob has no verbal lines in the entire movie. That doesn’t make him any less intimidating, however. By the time of his demise, Oddjob has proven himself to be a terrifying assassin. This makes him a truly formidable opponent for Bond throughout the film.

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Fiona Volpe is the first of many femme fatales in the James Bond movie series.

Fiona is a professional assassin employed by Spectre. She has been sent to England as part of the organization’s NATO mission to hijack a Vulcan bomber armed with two nuclear warheads.

At first, Bond is drawn in by Fiona, and they end up going to bed together. It’s only afterwards that her status as an assassin is revealed.

“My dear girl, don’t flatter yourself,” Bond tells her upon learning her identity. “What I did this evening was for King and country. You don’t think it gave me any pleasure, do you?”

“But of course, I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond,” Fiona replies. “James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents, then immediately returns to the side of right and virtue… but not this one!”

Fiona is widely regarded to be one of the best femme fatales in any Bond movie. No list of Bond villains would be complete without her!

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Blofeld is in various Bond films and is portrayed by multiple actors. One of his best runs, however, is in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. He’s an evil genius whose goal is to dominate the world, making him the perfect foil for Bond.

Blofeld is the leader of the deadly Spectre criminal organization. In this movie, after becoming the subject of an international manhunt by the British secret service, Blofeld establishes a clinical allergy-research institute atop Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps. The women who come to his clinic are then brainwashed to become his “Angels of Death.”

The movie ends with Blofeld killing Bond’s wife Tracy mere hours after they marry. This leaves Bond more desperate than ever to take down Blofeld forever.

Of the multiple appearances that Blofeld makes in Bond movies, he’s arguably at his most villainous in this film.

Now we enter the Roger Moore era of James Bond films. The villains in these movies are typically a little more fun. Scaramanga, however, is just as terrifying of a villain as the evildoers that Sean Connery’s Bond went up against in the 1960s.

Scaramanga is a deadly assassin who kills with his signature weapon, his golden gun. This is explained in the theme song for the movie that plays over the opening credits.

“He has a powerful weapon,” the songstress Lulu sings. “He charges a million a shot. An assassin that’s second to none. The Man with the Golden Gun.”

Many have argued that Scaramanga is the most dangerous adversary that Bond faces in the entire franchise. His skills as an assassin are unmatched, and may even be better than Bond’s. This leaves the viewer thinking throughout the movie that this may be one villain who Bond simply can’t overcome.

Jaws is a professional assassin who earns his name because of his weapon of choice, which is his  stainless steel teeth in his mouth. His name also partly stems from his enormous size, as he’s over seven feet tall, and is a clear reference to the 1975 hit movie Jaws.

Known as one of the most infamous henchman in the Bond franchise, Jaws appears in both The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and the next Bond movie Moonraker (1979).

Jaws is so physically strong that he can bend bars of hard steel with his bare hands without breaking a sweat. He’s also strong enough not to be fazed by even a great amount of physical abuse. This combined with his ability to kill by just biting into someone makes him one villain that is not to be messed with!

Unlike the other villains on this list, Jaws actually has a happy ending, as he has a change of heart after finding love. In the end, he’s one of the most memorable villains of Moore’s Bond years.

May Day is another femme fatale, and she’s even more formidable than many of the men in the James Bond franchise.

May Day is the bodyguard and lover of the movie’s villain Max Zorin. She gives Bond a run for his money on multiple occasions. May Day alternates between fighting Bond, trying to kill him, and outright seducing him, keeping Agent 007 on his toes at all times.

Even when she is seducing Bond, there is something highly intimidating about her, making her one of the most unforgettable villains in any Bond movie.

By the end of the movie, May Day has a change of heart, and she makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the world. Even so, no list of Bond villains would be complete without this incredible character!

The final femme fatale on our list is Xenia Onatopp. She’s a former Soviet fighter-pilot and a ruthless assassin who uses sex as a weapon.

After the USSR collapsed, Xenia joined the Janus crime syndicate, which is led by renegade MI6 agent Alec Trevelyan. She’s a deadly assassin who has a complete lack of empathy for her victims. She also appears to receive sexual satisfaction through killing, which only makes the character all the more creepy.

Xenia is proficient in martial arts and maintains a considerable degree of physical strength. On top of that, she’s a talented aviator who at one point manages to commandeer a stolen EMP-proof helicopter.

Whenever Xenia is on the screen, she sends chills down the spines of viewers. This makes her one of the most memorable Bond villains in the entire franchise!

The villainous Le Chiffre is a banker who finances the world’s terrorist organizations.

He’s a mathematical genius and chess prodigy, making him one of the most intellectual villains that Bond ever faces. These skills allow Le Chiffre to earn large sums of money in games of chance and probability. He has a specific talent for poker, which ends up being the main plot of the movie.

Le Chiffre ends up taking on Bond in a high stakes Texas hold ’em tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro. From there, Bond must use his wits to take on Le Chiffre in a way that he rarely has to do in his battles against villains.

Though some villains are terrifying because of their physicality, Le Chiffre’s mind is what makes him such a formidable opponent for Bond. He certainly puts Bond through the wringer mentally in this film!

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Finally, there’s Lyutsifer Safin, the villain in the latest Bond movie that came out.

Safin is a terrorist leader and scientist who wants to take down the criminal Spectre organization as revenge for the deaths of his family. He soon came to see himself as a nasty and ruthless reflection of Bond himself.

“James Bond. History of violence. License to kill,” Safin says at one point. “Vendetta with Ernst Blofeld. In love with Madeleine Swann. I could be speaking to my own reflection.”

Safin is a complex villain who displays deadly traits while also being merciful at times. This complexity makes him the epitome of the perfect modern Bond villain. In the end, he’s the perfect villain to close out this list!