The 100 Greatest Performances
86. Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Walker was the last actor most directors envisioned as a villain; he played a lot of all-American military men, and even Johannes Brahms. But Alfred Hitchcock—who took the same subversive tack with Anthony Perkins in Psycho— knew he’d bring the perfect blend of mischief, mayhem, and mania to Bruno Anthony, the seductive psychopath who wants to trade murders with a tennis player (Farley Granger) he meets on a train. Throttling a party guest, popping a kid’s balloon with his cigarette, flamboyant Bruno is imbued by Walker with a fascinating, insinuating charm that renders us almost complicit in his evildoing.
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Photo courtesty of Movie Library Archives Hachette Filipacchi Media/DR.
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