70. Judy Benjamin
Played by Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin (1980, dir. Howard Zieff)

Star and executive producer Hawn never envisioned Nancy Meyers’s comedic script about a Jewish princess-divorcée (and widow) who joins the Army as a “full-on feminist film,” she says. “I mean, what’s so heroic about walking away from what’s bad in your life?” Well, nothing—but that’s exactly why Private Judy Benjamin is so likable. She has more flaws than Swiss cheese has holes, yet she still shows up the Thornbirds. Though she played a feisty naïf (“Is green the only color these come in?” Judy asks about her fatigues), Hawn was all business offscreen as both a producer and a new mom: “Kate [Hudson] was nine months old, and I took her to the office with me every day.” Fortunately, there was no need for boot-camp conditioning. “I had just had a baby and was already on the case,” she says. “Getting back into shape was an everyday effort.” Physical comedy, costars like Eileen Brennan (“my friend from Laugh-In”), and “jokes that were driven by character instead of mindless shtick” all combined to make Private Benjamin click.

Defining Moment: “When Judy’s parents came to take her away from the Army,” Hawn says. “The sergeant was overjoyed she was leaving and held the release document in front of her face, coaxing her to sign on the dotted line. That marked the beginning of Judy’s awakening.” (Warner DVD)

69. Terry Malloy
Played by Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront (1954, dir. Elia Kazan)

Cinema’s most multileveled palooka, Terry Malloy, a boxer-turned-dockworker, is going through life’s motions, until he finds redemption through a difficult love: He falls for the sister of a friend he unwittingly set up for murder. With his Method mumbling, dead-on improvisations, and battered features (Kazan attributed this to the cold wintertime shoot), Brando transforms himself from loser to crusading idealist, though his worst beating comes from telling the truth about corruption.

Defining Moment: His speech in the taxicab after Terry realizes that his brother Charley’s betrayal led to his downfall. “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. . . . It was you, Charley.” (Columbia TriStar DVD)

68. Alex DeLarge
Played by Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange (1971, dir. Stanley Kubrick)

He loves Beethoven, his bowler hat, and a bit of the old in-out, but it’s ultraviolence that he truly relishes. Alex, the sophisticated young hooligan from novelist Anthony Burgess’s futuristic dystopia, comes close to making murder, rape, and the wanton destruction of small animals look like Saturday-night fun. We know he’s devoid of any moral compass, but we don’t want to see him fitted for an artificial one either—not just on principle, but because of the multiple charms of McDowell’s performance.

Defining Moment: Attacking a couple in their home with his band of droogs, Alex does a version of “Singin’ in the Rain” (McDowell’s own on-set inspiration) that earned Kubrick, and probably McDowell, the eternal enmity of Gene Kelly. (Warner DVD)

67. Inspector Jacques Clouseau
Played by Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther (1964, dir. Blake Edwards) and four later movies (not counting the outtakes that constitute Trail of the Pink Panther)

No one can butcher a French accent or recover a diamond quite like Clouseau. He began movie life as a particularly hapless cuckold but soon came to represent the ultimate in bumbling would-be crime-solvers. In his low-brimmed hat and trench coat, Sellers stumbled his way through a series of increasingly outlandish comic misadventures, wreaking slapstick havoc, weathering Kato’s surprise attacks, and impersonating everything from the Hunchback of Notre Dame to a salty sea dog.

Defining Moment: In 1976’s The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Clouseau gets his hand stuck in a chain mail glove, which is connected to a spiked flail. He inadvertently clobbers a piano to objections of “That’s a priceless Steinway!” “Not anymore,” he replies. (The series is available on MGM DVD and Artisan DVD.)

66. Navin Johnson, a.k.a. the Jerk
Played by Steve Martin in The Jerk (1979, dir. Carl Reiner)

“I was born a poor, black child,” Navin Johnson says in this “rags-to-riches-to-rags story,” which uses many of the bits Martin was doing in his standup act at the time. His tuna-, Tab-, and Twinkie-loving loser isn’t so much a jerk as he is a gullible know-nothing with a golden heart who stumbles through Jerry Lewis–style misadventures with his trusty dog, Shithead. (In fact, Martin says, the movie’s original title was Easy Money. “I had just read The Idiot by Dostoevsky, and I said to Carl Reiner, ‘I need a title like that.’ And I just came up with The Jerk.”) How could Johnson have known that Opti-grab, the invention that made him fabulously wealthy, would cause folks to go cockeyed? In the end, he may lose his wealth, power, and “all-red billiard room with the giant stuffed camel,” but he’ll still have his family, his woman (Bernadette Peters), and, yes, his Thermos.

Defining Moment: In Martin’s favorite scene, the Jerk is inexplicably targeted by a sniper at a gas station. As oil cans explode around him with each missed shot, he deduces that “he hates these cans. Stay away from the cans!” A previous scene that explains more about the sniper (sort of) was cut: “He was practicing at a rifle range, and he realized he was a terrible shot,” says Martin. “All you hear is him muttering, ‘Gonna kill. Kill the bastards.’ He’s just a random angry guy.” (Universal DVD)

65. Edward Scissorhands
Played by Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands (1990, dir. Tim Burton)

The unfinished creation of an eccentric inventor (Vincent Price), Edward is Burton’s take on Frankenstein’s monster. His menacing appearance belies a gentle, lonely soul, one far too fragile to fit into the cookie-cutter suburb where he’s taken by a good-hearted Avon lady (Dianne Wiest) after she’s called on his isolated castle. Though Edward is made by man, he has the soul of an artist (specialty: haircuts and topiary), and he cannot stomach the ugliness of the community that first embraces, then manipulates, and finally rejects him.

Defining Moment: When the girl he loves (Winona Ryder) whispers, “Hold me,” it’s a bittersweet moment for this consummate outsider. Edward raises his scissor hands, hesitates, and then sadly tells her, “I can’t.” (Fox DVD)

64. Rocky Balboa
Played by Sylvester Stallone in Rocky (1976, dir. John G. Avildsen) and four later films

The year was 1976, and after so much cynical, Watergate-era fare at the cinema, bicentennial America craved something exhilarating. That jolt came in the form of a streetwise southpaw boxer named Rocky Balboa. When the reigning champion, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers), plucks the sometimes painfully slow and raw Rocky from bad-side-of-Philly obscurity by challenging him to a world-class fight, it’s time for our hero to step up—and prove once and for all that he’s not “just another bum from the neighborhood.” His triumph comes from going the distance—and getting the (unlikely) girl, a super-shy librarian whose name makes up half of the movie’s most repeated mantra: “Yo, Adrian.”

Defining Moment: Rocky runs through the streets in the early morning. As the energetic theme song climaxes, he races up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and turns around to face the city, fists high in the air, victorious. (MGM DVD)

63. Carrie White
Played by Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976, dir. Brian De Palma)

It starts with a shower and ends in a bloodbath. As the students at the aptly named Bates High School are about to discover, creepy Carrie White is coming into her own. And that spells telekinetic disaster for all who torment the skittish loner with the loony mom—and for quite a few innocent bystanders as well. De Palma’s take on Stephen King’s first novel, a masterful mix of horror and adolescent angst, launched the director’s career and brought Spacek the first of her six Oscar nominations. “All the kids think I’m funny,” says Carrie, who yearns to be pretty in pink at the prom. “I want to be normal.” Not bloody likely.

Defining Moment: The opening shower scene in the girls’ locker room, in which Carrie gets her first period and shatters her first light bulb. Spacek has likened it to “being hit by a Mack truck.” (MGM DVD)

62. John Shaft
Played by Richard Roundtree in Shaft (1971, dir. Gordon Parks)

“Who’s the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the . . . ” Yeah, yeah, we know. But back then, movie audiences had never seen anyone like John Shaft. Up to that time, most African-Americans were depicted as having to adjust to a white world (see number 20, Sidney Poitier’s Virgil Tibbs) or simply as jive-talking muggers or delinquents. With his sexual prowess, huge ego, skill with a gun, and take-no-prisoners approach to criminal justice, Shaft wasn’t having any of that. Miscreants (white or black) beware, this cat Shaft is a bad mother. . . .

Defining Moment: Before the opening credits finish rolling, we learn just how bad a mother Shaft is. With the Isaac Hayes theme music grooving in the background, Shaft emerges from a 42nd Street subway station, strolls Frogger-style into oncoming traffic, and flips off a driver who has the gall to honk his horn. (Warner DVD)

61. J.J. Hunsecker
Played by Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success (1957, dir. Alexander Mackendrick)

The ice-pick–sharp dialogue certainly didn’t hurt matters, but it’s Lancaster’s physical indomitability that distinguishes this self-righteous snake of an N.Y.C. gossip columnist. “I love this dirty town,” Hunsecker mutters to hapless press agent and cat’s-paw Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis)—and when you hear that, you wonder what his definition of love could possibly be.

Defining Moment: Holding frigid court at one of his regular nightspots, Hunsecker eviscerates Falco, a senator whom he calls a friend, his bimbo consort, and her manager. This is a guy who’s got everybody’s number—except, as we’ll eventually see, his own. (MGM DVD)