36. Faye Dunaway Evelyn Cross Mulwray 
      Chinatown (1974)

This career-defining role as one messed-up L.A. broad was a job that Dunaway almost didn’t get; she was neck-and-neck with Jane Fonda for the role, but director Roman Polanski’s first choice won out. Tensions on the set were immense—costar Jack Nicholson referred to her as “the Dread Dunaway”—but something in the atmosphere created magic.

Dunaway gives her damaged innocent not only the Raymond Chandler–esque femme fatale characteristics, but a world-weary stubbornness that propels the rest of the movie. She drove Polanski to distraction by fixing her painted-on eyebrows, cupid bow lipstick, and powdered face after every single take (the crew presented her with a mock-up of a giant container of Blistex at the end of the film). Such attention to detail only serves to make the immaculate seem more tainted: In his 1974 review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote that Dunaway was “a woman too beautiful to be either good or true.” Daughter or sister? You decide.

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