30. King Kong
In King Kong (1933, dirs. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)

In real life this ape was only 18 inches tall; stop-motion animation was so crude at the time that you can see the creature’s “fur” shifting now and then—fingermarks, literally, of his creator, Willis O’Brien. Nevertheless, the first Kong has something today’s CGI masters are hard-pressed to give their monsters: a soul. Kidnapped and forced into servitude, finally emerging defiant, the giant ape reveals facets of a very full personality, making us palpably understand the impossible-to-resist urge to protect one’s mate—even when the “mate” is as size-inappropriate and unwilling as Fay Wray.

Defining Moment: High atop the Empire State Building, the beast risks everything for his beauty. (Warner VHS)

29. Daphne/Jerry
Played by Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot (1959, dir. Billy Wilder)

Saxman Joe (Tony Curtis) and bassist Jerry (Lemmon) have figured out a way to escape the Chicago mob: cross-dress to join an all-girl band with a Florida gig. It’s a cinch for Joe, who’s so slick he concocts another male identity for himself later in the film. But it’s torture for poor Jerry, who soon attracts a most insistent male millionaire. From frustration to confusion to elation back to frustration again, Lemmon enacts one of moviedom’s great comic creations.

Defining Moment: After getting stern behavioral counsel from Joe, Jerry, as miserable as any kid in a candy store could be, lies in the top berth of his almost all-female sleeping car and repeats the litany Joe has given him: “I’m a girl . . . . I’m a girl. . . . I wish I were dead. . . . I’m a girl. . . . ” (MGM DVD)

28. Captain Quint
Played by Robert Shaw in Jaws (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg)

Shaw worked in films for more than a decade before becoming a second-tier star as a character actor. Spielberg knew how to use him best, as the saltiest man on earth, the glowering, irascible fisherman (and shark killer) Quint. Roy Scheider’s citified cop and Richard Dreyfuss’s beady-eyed marine biologist shrink alongside Quint, a force so elemental that either he or the big fish must die when they meet.

Defining Moment: Who can forget the this-time-it’s-personal slide Quint takes to be the shark’s last hot lunch? But the prefiguring speech he makes about surviving the death of the U.S.S. Indianapolis (“When he comes after you, he doesn’t seem to be living until he bites you”) is terror distilled. (Universal DVD)

27. Marge Gunderson
Played by Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996, dir. Joel Coen)

A very pregnant small-town police chief with a thick Minnesota accent, Marge Gunderson could easily have been played for cheap laughs. Instead, there’s something deeply satisfying and innately humorous about the way she doesn’t let the cold climate, the cold people she encounters, or her 30 extra pounds affect her can-do attitude. McDormand says she rejected suggestions by her husband, director Joel Coen, “to do certain pregnancy things, like having trouble getting up out of chairs. I wanted her to be as physically capable as she could. I like the fact that she’s just working. It’s not even a feminist political statement—most people, pregnant or not, have to work.” Surprisingly, she “wasn’t pleased” when she first read the script. “I didn’t think it would be that interesting. I found her sheltered existence kind of scary, a little too reminiscent of my background coming from the Midwest.” But soon she warmed to Marge. “She’s nonjudgmental, and her philosophy of life is pretty simple,” says McDormand, who won an Oscar for the role. “I like that.” The character still looms large: “Little old ladies come up to me and say, ‘I just love that movie.’ I’m like, ‘Do you remember how many people died in the movie?’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, but we just love Marge.’ ”

Defining Moment: Arriving at a murder scene, Marge almost loses her breakfast—not because of the gore, but because of morning sickness. “I did suggest the puking being connected to her pregnancy,” McDormand says. “I thought it would be funny.” (MGM DVD)

26. E.T.
In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982, dir. Steven Spielberg)

The wrinkly critter whose spaceship leaves him behind on Earth represents one of humanity’s dearest hopes: that there could be life out there besides us, and that it could be intelligent and good and adorably big-eyed. Everything from The Odyssey on teaches us that the need to go home is a deep human longing; E.T. teaches us it may be a universal one as well.

Defining Moment: As E.T. and Elliott (Henry Thomas) race to the forest, their bike is propelled into the night sky by E.T.’s powers. (Universal DVD)

25. Gordon Gekko
Played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street (1987, dir. Oliver Stone)

After Richard Gere and Warren Beatty considered the role of über-financier Gekko—a slicked-back symbol of Reagan-era excess—Michael Douglas, who was mostly being offered lightweight parts, jumped at the chance to play someone so ruthless. “[Gekko] has the beauty of a shark,” he says. “He’s just carnivorous. There’s no moral ambiguity or remorse whatsoever.” Maybe, but as Douglas adds, he still gets “half-drunk Wall Street investment bankers coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, man, you were the guy, greed is good.’ They look at me like I’m a folk hero, but I was supposed to be the bad guy. It’s a very sad comment.”

Defining Moment: Sad comment, but great bit—the “greed is good” speech that Gekko delivers before an audience of corporate stockholders is a show-stopper. Douglas’s assassin-like delivery and utter cockiness make turning away impossible. Unless, of course, you are Oliver Stone. “I always tease Oliver because he spent most of his time looking at the script to make sure I had it word perfect,” Douglas says. “He did a lot of provocations to make me that much nastier, tougher. And he was not afraid in the process to exert my hostilities toward him to get results. He watched me enough in the other takes, so I forgave him afterwards.” (Fox DVD)

24. The Little Tramp
Played by Charlie Chaplin in scores of films, beginning (makeup-wise, at least) with 1914’s Mabel's Strange Predicament

The bowler-hatted, Fuller Brush–mustached hobo has been so thoroughly dissected over the years that by now many film buffs have trouble seeing him as anything but an extension of his creator’s narcissism. For those less troubled by life and art correspondences, the image is iconic and the character a lovable fount of comic invention. Which is kind of odd, since most people don’t get all warm and cuddly over real-life bums. Which is what he is, let’s face it.

Defining Moment: The beatific smile at the end of City Lights. (Warner DVD)

23. Ethan Edwards
Played by John Wayne in The Searchers (1956, dir. John Ford)

He comes to visit his pioneer brother and his family in their new home, and the main thing everyone wonders about this mystery man is whether trouble has followed him out West. Trouble comes, but it’s got nothing to do with this former Reb; a Comanche raid leaves most of Edwards’s kin dead, and he sets off to find the two girls who’ve been kidnapped. A flat-out racist with a deep knowledge of Comanche culture, he’d rather see Lucy and Debbie dead than have the Comanches make them their own. Will he give up? As he would put it, “That’ll be the day.”

Defining Moment: When he chases after the terrified Debbie and you think he’s going to kill her and then . . . Oh, you just have to see it. (Warner DVD)

22. Travis Bickle
Played by Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976, dir. Martin Scorsese)

Some see this querulous and off-putting figure as a token of urban alienation, others (frighteningly) as a kingpin of cool. But Bickle’s too slippery to be pinned down with a sociological explanation and too sick to be looked up to. He is, finally, a terrifying disconnect given human form, someone who thinks he’s figured out why he feels the way he does but can’t do anything to change it—someone who (as his porno-theater date with Cybill Shepherd’s faux-Madonna demonstrates) just does not get it.

Defining Moment: Everybody quotes the “You talkin’ to me?” massacre rehearsal, but the essence of Bickle is seen in the deadness of his eyes as he allows his small television set to crash to the floor after slowly rocking its stand (a fruit crate) with his boot. (Columbia TriStar DVD)

21. Susan Vance
Played by Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938, dir. Howard Hawks)

Can someone just throw David Huxley (Cary Grant) a bone? No, really. All the scientist wants is that last piece for his dinosaur and $1 million from a dinosaur of a dowager to support his museum. Then he can marry his uptight fiancée. Instead, he meets the irrepressible Susan, who annoys, embarrasses, and then, of course, captivates him. Susan is one of the first (and the best) of the Screen Savers, those screwball heroines who show their men the joy of escaping a dead-end job, a bitchy girlfriend, or the general ennui of life without, well, them.

Defining Moment: As they chase after an excruciatingly yappy terrier who has buried David’s prize bone, Susan exclaims, “Isn’t this fun, David? Just like a game.” Her face is filled with glee. We realize that life is a game to her—and that David should start playing as soon as possible. (Turner Home Video VHS)