There are great vampires, and there are great vampire movies. This is not a list of either. The great Korean film from Chan-wook Park, Thirst, unfortunately has no part to play on this list. Neither does the count himself, Dracula, the reason for this list.

Here we are wondering, who plays vampire the best. It’s tough question. Not all actors playing the un-dead are up to the challenge. Most aren’t. Add to that, pretty much every actor in Hollywood has played a vampire by now. Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas played vamps in the same movie. None made it. Jim Carrey, Johnny Depp, Nicolas Cage all played funny vamps. Eddie Murphy and Pee Wee Herman’s Paul Ruebens and Monica Belucci all played Vamps in the 1990s, before we even hit the “vampire craze.” Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston even played hipster vamps in the Jim Jarmusch take on the vampires in love, The Only Lovers Left Alive. There are a lot of choices.

Still. First cuts are easy. Most of the vampire stuff on our screens for the past two decades or so has been terrible. No actor in the Twilight Saga was nominated by any of our contributors to hold a place on this list. Not even the campy fun parts, not even Michael Sheen, could elevate those roles to great performances. Likewise, no one nominated a part from The Vampire Diaries. I don’t know if any one at The Stake has seen that show, actually. Cut.

Second cuts are harder. Several really good parts fromTrue Blood came up. Stephen Moyer does so much, and well, as Bill and could have found a spot. So too Alexander Skarsgård and Kristin Bauer van Straten. But none of the True Blood roles made it.

Finally, we did get 1 vote, an adamant one, for Sesame Street’s The Count. Sorry to Bethany but he did not make the final cut. But a hand-puppet Count who specializes in numerical lists is the perfect way to start the count down of our top vampire performances, take it away, Count:

Salma Hayek, Santánico Pandemónium, From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

Someho From Dusk Till Dawn got a reputation as a cool, cult classic. Probably because Quentin Tarantino wrote it. But this movie pretty much sucks. Sorry to the fans out there. Still, Salma Hayek is, given her limited part to play, tremendous.

Director Robert Rordiguez and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino know how to mix sex and violence in a way that both arouses male fantasies and castrates them. Hayek carries this Freudian burden with aplomb. She is at once attractive and repulsive; a beautiful stripper and a terrifying monster.

Bill Nighy, Viktor, The Underworld film series (2003-2009)

Some actors thrive in bad movies. Or, in Bill Nighy’s case, in the worst movies (Love Actually; Underworld; I, Frankenstein; Pirates of the Caribbean 2 & 3) he seems to be at his best. In the Underworld films he and Michael Sheen chew up the scenes and spit them out, leaving every other actor dead to rights.

What else to say but sometimes the best play in vampire movies is to give the actor the room to stretch out and ham it up.

Colin Farrell, Fright Night (2011)

A vampire moves in next door and one neighbor gets suspicious. They fight; the vampire loses; the neighborhood is saved. Fright Night is simple and this movie remake of the 1985 original would have been forgettable if not for Farrell’s terrific performance. He plays the vampire who moves in next door and he’s my exact idea of an ancient vampire. Not only is he charming and hot (half of vampire performances are all about sexiness) but he also wears his age in small physical twitches and tics.

This is a vampire who’s lived way too long and has been alone for far too long. He turns out to be a unsympathetic monster while battling his neighbor but before that happens, the price for eternal life shows up in his twitchy nervousness and inability to keep it together during simple social situations.

Wesley Snipes, Blade, Blade II

Technically Blade is a half-human half-vampire hydbrid but you know what? We don’t care about the technicalities. Wesley Snipes plays the Daywalker Blade, and he does so with all the stoic viciousness of a medieval knight protecting humanity from the forces of darkness.

The Blade series is fine in general, but Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade II elevates the series, the character, the actor into much higher territory. It’s a great movie, and proof that you don’t need to be a great actor (most on this list are not *cough Colin Farrell cough*) to nail a great vampire role.

Kiefer Sutherland, David, The Lost Boys (1987)

I got your teeny-bopper vampires right here.

The Lost Boys is that 1980s movie you might remember with all those young stars lulling about? No, not The Outsiders. The Lost Boys is like The Outsiders but instead of a being moving story about young adult life and death, it’s a horror movie about vampires (who never grow up, get it?).

Kiefer Sutherland plays David, the head of a vampire gang in California, and he does so with such pleasure and fangy awfulness that he ranks among the best of the best when it comes to teen vamps (despite that haircut. Jesus). David would fucking destroy the Cullens. But the Frog Brothers would too, so, what’s that say about The Cullens?

Gary Oldman, Dracula, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Dracula played in the old fashioned, pre-method style of “realist” acting. In other words, Oldman is playing Laurence Olivier if Olivier ever played the Prince of Darkness.It takes some getting used to Francis Ford Coppola’s vision of Dracula, but when you lean into the hyper-theatricality of the film and it’s performances, Oldman shines.

Coppola’s Dracula is a strange movie, full of visual trickery like an MC Escher painting, and it’s the perfect home for all the crazy Gary Oldman, Tom Waits, and the rest of the cast can muster.

Kirsten Dunst, Claudia, Interview with the Vampire (1994)

The 11 year old Dunst plays the most forbidden creature of all the un-deads, the immortal child. Her mind ages but her body does not and she manages to play the role with all the complicated nastiness that would come from learning that you were made to be a living doll for your absolutely fucked up Vampire dads.

Dunst talked at the time about not knowing exactly what was going on, and how her kissing scene was little more than a cootie-event, but despite her age and the outsized nature of her roll, it’s a great vampire performance.

Lina Leandersson, Eli, Let the Right One In (2008)

Let the Right One in is potentially the best vampire film ever made, at the very least, the best of our latest vampire-heavy cinematic era. It is the story of a bullied and lonely kid who falls in love with a young girl, that is, coincidentally, a vampire. That girl is played by Lina Leanderson, who was 12 when she played Eli.

If Kirstin Dunst is forced to play the aged woman in the child’s body with the accompanying rage and anger of high Ann Rice Pagentry, Leanderson’s performance is one of a quieter child vampire, in a film that takes vampires as seriously as possible. This is a grim movie, and Lina Leandersson is brilliant.

Max Schrek, Count Orlok, Nosferatu (1922) & Willem DaFoe, Max Schrek, Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

The original and perhaps the best vampire film. While the film no longer scares and, for many viewer, appears hokey (the vampire frictionlessly sliding across the floor is clearly on a rolling platform), the performance is on par with Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein’s Monster. You can’t imagine the character played by anyone else and you can never see Schrek (or Karloff) as anything but their classic characters.

Seventy eight years later, Dafoe strikes the right balance between creepy and goofy in this vampire movie about making a vampire movie. Defoe plays Scrhrek during the making Nosferatu. The actor, in this instance, is a vampire is playing a vampire in the original vampire classic. It’s bats, this one.

James Marsters, Spike, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

There are bad Vamps who kill and love to do so, and there are good Vamps with souls and sparkles, and then there is Spike. He is a demon with no soul, who kills and drinks human blood and understands the pleasure of vampire life, which is a combination of absurd joyfulness and horrible murderousness. But then Spike falls for a human gal and the resulting vampy-complications are just perfect.

Spike is number 1, and belongs in the spot. In part, that’s because Spike gets the benefit of having a 5 season story arc, but thems the shakes. Watching him go from the punk-rock vamp without a care to, well, where he ends up, is great, emotionally powerful television.

Anyone that thinks James Marsters isn’t the bloke to be a this of best acting performances, I would ask you to watch the show, and remember this is not a race for best actor, but the best performance of a vampire. The best vampire in a show full of vampires, that also happens to be one the best TV shows ever made?

Who else but Spike.
(The following clip is for those who have seen Buffy, to remember, oh my goodness. If you haven’t watched, Spoiler Alert)

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