James Bond Villains: Every Main Enemy, Actor and Movie

The main James Bond villains are the one big enemy each film is built around, from Dr. No in 1962 to Lyutsifer Safin in 2021, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld is the one who returns most often. The most recurring name is Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who leads SPECTRE and appears in five EON films, played by Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray and Christoph Waltz. Max von Sydow also played him in Never Say Never Again (1983), which is one of the two non EON films.

Most villains run a scheme in clear steps (steal, hide, raise the stakes, trigger), and Bond works backward through them. The pattern runs from a Jamaican island base in the first film to a nanobot weapon in the last of the Daniel Craig era, and the Craig-era enemies share a connected organization.

Bond 26 has no announced title or release date, and the latest on it is at next james bond movie. The full run of films, from Dr. No onward, is laid out in james bond movies in order.

Dr. No is the first villain of the series, played by Joseph Wiseman in Dr. No (1962), directed by Terence Young. The UK premiere was on 7 October 1962 (reported) and the US release on 8 May 1963 (reported).

He is a reclusive scientist and a SPECTRE member with prosthetic metal hands, and his base sits on Crab Key, which Bond reaches with Quarrel and Honey Ryder. His scheme is to disrupt rocket launches from Cape Canaveral with radio jamming, which is what first draws British intelligence to Jamaica. He tries to recruit Bond rather than simply kill him, and when Bond refuses he holds him prisoner. Bond escapes and sabotages the base's nuclear reactor, and Dr. No dies in the reactor pool.

What makes him a template is the structure: a hidden island, a technical plot, a polite conversation with the hero, then a base that blows up. Many later villains follow that same sequence, and the film also plants SPECTRE as a threat that outlives him.

Rosa Klebb, played by Lotte Lenya, is the field commander of SPECTRE's plot in From Russia with Love, directed by Terence Young. The UK premiere was on 11 October 1963 (reported) and the US release on 8 April 1964 (reported).

The scheme is designed by the chess playing planner Kronsteen, and Klebb runs it on the ground. Tatiana Romanova is told to pretend she wants to defect with a Lektor decoding machine, and Bond is the only agent she will deal with. Red Grant, a SPECTRE assassin played by Robert Shaw, kills Ali Kerim Bey and joins Bond on the Orient Express as a fake British agent. Bond works out the truth and kills Grant in a brutal fight in a train compartment.

Klebb's own moment comes in Venice, where she appears disguised as a hotel maid and tries to kill Bond with a poisoned blade in her shoe. Tatiana shoots her dead before she can strike. It is a small and mechanical weapon, and that is exactly why it sticks in memory.

Auric Goldfinger's Fort Knox plan is to set off a bomb inside the vault so the US gold becomes radioactive and his own gold rises in value. He is played by Gert Fröbe in Goldfinger (1964), directed by Guy Hamilton. The UK premiere was on 20 September 1964 (reported) and the US release on 22 December 1964 (confirmed). The film earned $124.9 million worldwide on a $3 million budget.

His plan breaks down into two steps. Pussy Galore and her flying team are set to gas the area around Fort Knox, then Goldfinger detonates the bomb in the vault. The goal is not to steal the gold but to make it unusable. Bond gets a message out, US forces move in, and a specialist stops the bomb with seven seconds left.

Earlier in the film Goldfinger shows his temper by killing Jill Masterson, who helped Bond in Miami, and covering her body in gold paint. In the finale he hijacks a jet, a struggle with Bond leads to a gunshot, and the pressure change pulls him out of the plane to his death. For a mechanic's view of a villain plot, this is the cleanest one in the series.

Oddjob, played by Harold Sakata in Goldfinger, is Auric Goldfinger's silent bodyguard and the series' first major henchman. Bond plays the golf game against Goldfinger first and then meets Oddjob, and later trails Goldfinger to Switzerland with Oddjob close by.

Oddjob dies in the Fort Knox vault, where Bond defeats him during the bomb crisis. He gives Bond a fight that the main villain cannot supply himself, and Bond's duel with Oddjob gives the Fort Knox finale a physical edge.

Ernst Stavro Blofeld is the head of SPECTRE and appears in five EON films, played by Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray and Christoph Waltz. Pleasence plays him in You Only Live Twice (1967), directed by Lewis Gilbert, where he works from a base inside a volcano and tries to push the US and the USSR into war. The UK premiere was on 13 June 1967 (reported) and the US release on the same day (confirmed). Bond's mini autogyro Little Nellie helps expose that base.

Telly Savalas takes over in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), directed by Peter R. Hunt, with both the UK premiere and the US release on 18 December 1969 (reported). Ernst Stavro Blofeld runs a clinic on Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps, conditioning young women to spread a plague that would wreck the world's food supply. Blofeld and Irma Bunt drive past Bond's car and shoot, and Tracy is killed.

Charles Gray plays him in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), directed by Guy Hamilton, using a laser satellite and an oil rig base off Baja California. The UK premiere was on 30 December 1971 and the US release on 17 December 1971 (both reported). His escape in a mini submarine ends in his apparent death.

Christoph Waltz plays Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021), both with Daniel Craig. In Spectre he reveals that he is Bond's adoptive brother, and in No Time to Die he dies from nanobots in Bond's blood. Waltz's version of Ernst Stavro Blofeld is the one who ties the last two Craig films together.

Francisco Scaramanga, played by Christopher Lee, is a hired killer who charges a million dollars a job in The Man with the Golden Gun, directed by Guy Hamilton. The UK premiere was on 19 December 1974 (reported) and the US release on 18 December 1974 (reported).

The film opens with Scaramanga hunting and shooting a hitman named Rodney in a private funhouse. MI6 then receives a golden bullet marked 007, and M pulls Bond from the search for a missing solar scientist because he fears Bond is the target. Scaramanga also kills Hai Fat and takes over his business and the Solex Agitator, a device that can harness solar power. His henchman Nick Nack, played by Hervé Villechaize, steals it earlier in the plot.

The duel is the high point. Scaramanga vanishes among the funhouse trick rooms, and Bond wins by standing in as a mannequin and shooting him dead. Bond drives the AMC Hornet in the astro spiral jump recorded by Guinness World Records; Scaramanga's own flying car is a separate gag.

Jaws, played by Richard Kiel, is the only henchman in the series who turns on his employer, switching sides against Hugo Drax in Moonraker. He first hunts Bond and Anya Amasova as a huge steel toothed killer in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), directed by Lewis Gilbert. That film had a US release on 13 July 1977 (reported); its UK premiere date is not confirmed. Moonraker (1979) had a UK premiere on 27 June 1979 and a US release on 29 June 1979 (both reported), and it earned $210 million worldwide.

In the first film he works for the shipping tycoon Karl Stromberg, whose plan is to fire stolen submarine missiles at Moscow and New York and build a new civilization under the sea. Jaws survives a fight with a shark and returns in Moonraker, now working for Hugo Drax. During the space station battle, Bond persuades Jaws to turn against Drax, and Jaws and his companion Dolly are rescued by US Marines.

He survives both films, and the change of sides in Moonraker gives Jaws an arc across two movies.

Max Zorin, played by Christopher Walken, plans to destroy Silicon Valley by flooding it so that his Zorin Industries controls the world microchip market. The film is A View to a Kill (1985), directed by John Glen. The US release was on 24 May 1985 (reported) and the UK premiere on 13 June 1985 (reported).

Zorin Industries makes a microchip that resists electromagnetic pulses, and Bond recovers a copy from the body of agent 003 in Siberia. The racehorses on Zorin's estate win with striking regularity because he implants adrenaline devices in them. The CIA's Chuck Lee explains that Zorin is probably the product of a Nazi steroid experiment, and the scientist behind it, Dr. Carl Mortner, now works for him. His bodyguard May Day, played by Grace Jones, kills a French detective in Paris.

The flooding works by detonating explosives under fault lines. The fight ends on the Golden Gate Bridge, where Zorin falls to his death.

Alec Trevelyan, played by Sean Bean in GoldenEye (1995), is a fellow British agent who becomes Bond's enemy. The film was directed by Martin Campbell. The US release was on 17 November 1995 (confirmed) and the UK premiere on 23 November 1995 (reported).

The film opens in 1986 with Bond and Trevelyan breaking into a Soviet chemical weapons plant, where Trevelyan appears to be shot dead by Colonel Ourumov. Nine years later it turns out that he faked his death and now leads the Janus crime syndicate, driven by a grudge against Britain. With Xenia Onatopp, he uses the GoldenEye satellite to wipe out the Severnaya radar station with an electromagnetic pulse.

His plan is to rob the Bank of England and then use GoldenEye to erase the records and wreck the British economy. That idea gives the film a personal edge, because Bond is fighting someone with the same training and the same history. Bond finally drops him from the antenna platform into the dish below as the base collapses.

Le Chiffre, played by Mads Mikkelsen, is a banker who handles money for terrorists in Casino Royale (2006), directed by Martin Campbell. The US release was on 17 November 2006 (confirmed) and the UK premiere on 16 November 2006 (reported). The film made $606 million worldwide against a $150 million budget.

His plan starts with a failure. Bond stops the attack on a prototype airliner at Miami airport, so Le Chiffre loses a fortune that he was holding for a warlord named Obanno. He then sets up a Texas hold 'em tournament at the Casino Royale in Montenegro to win the money back. MI6 stakes Bond in the game, and Vesper Lynd goes with him to watch the money.

Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper and tortures Bond for the account password, but Mr. White kills him and lets Bond and Vesper live. The novelty is that the big set piece is a card game, and the villain is more of a nervous accountant than a world conqueror. Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre is a banker under pressure, not a conqueror.

Raoul Silva, played by Javier Bardem, is a former MI6 agent turned cyberterrorist in Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes. Skyfall had its world premiere on 23 October 2012, its UK premiere on 26 October 2012 (confirmed) and its US release on 9 November 2012 (reported). The film earned about $1.1 billion worldwide on a $200 million budget.

His target is M, whom he blames for abandoning him. He gets hold of a list of undercover agents, a hacker blows up part of the MI6 building, and Bond meets him on a remote island after Séverine leads him there. Raoul Silva has Séverine killed, then lets Bond capture him and bring him to London, because his real aim is to reach M at her inquiry. Bond stops that attack, then takes M to Skyfall, his childhood home in Scotland, where they set traps with the gamekeeper Kincade.

Silva's men destroy the house, and he follows them to a nearby chapel, where Bond kills him with a thrown knife. M dies in Bond's arms, so Silva wins part of what he came for. The grudge of Raoul Silva is aimed at one person, M, rather than at a country.

The villains in the five Daniel Craig movies are Le Chiffre in Casino Royale (2006), Dominic Greene in Quantum of Solace (2008), Raoul Silva in Skyfall (2012), Ernst Stavro Blofeld in Spectre (2015) and Lyutsifer Safin in No Time to Die (2021), with Mr. White (Jesper Christensen) appearing in Casino Royale (2006), Quantum of Solace and Spectre (2015).

Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen) opens the run in Casino Royale (2006). Mr. White belongs to the larger organization behind him. In Quantum of Solace, directed by Marc Forster, Mathieu Amalric plays Dominic Greene, a businessman who poses as an environmentalist. He helps an exiled Bolivian general named Medrano seize power, and he quietly takes control of Bolivia's water supply so that he can sell it at a huge price. Bond leaves him stranded in the desert with only a can of oil.

Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) follows in Skyfall (2012). In Spectre (2015), Christoph Waltz plays Ernst Stavro Blofeld, who reveals that Mr. White's organization was a branch of SPECTRE. In No Time to Die (2021), directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, Rami Malek plays Lyutsifer Safin, who has a nanobot weapon called Project Heracles that targets people by their DNA. Lyutsifer Safin infects Bond with nanobots tuned to Madeleine and Mathilde, and Bond dies as missiles destroy the island.

Auric Goldfinger is the best James Bond villain, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld is second because of how much of the series he shapes. This ranking is my opinion, and other fans could reasonably order it differently.

1. Auric Goldfinger. Goldfinger has the clearest and cleverest plot in the series: make US gold radioactive so his own gold gains value. The Fort Knox bomb gives Bond a clock to beat, Oddjob adds the physical threat, and the cabin pressure death is a fitting end for a man who thought he controlled every variable.

2. Ernst Stavro Blofeld. His strength is range: a volcano base with Pleasence, a mountain clinic with Savalas, and the killing of Tracy that gives On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) its sting. Waltz's version is the weakest because the adoptive brother link feels added after the fact.

3. Le Chiffre. He is the smallest threat in scale and the most believable in motive. A man who lost other people's money and needs it back makes the poker game feel urgent, and Mikkelsen plays him as someone with little room to bluff.

4. Francisco Scaramanga. The funhouse duel with Bond posing as a mannequin is one of the best one on one set pieces in the series, and Christopher Lee gives the character a dry confidence. The solar device plot is the weak part.

5. Raoul Silva. He is a mirror for M and Bond. His plan is cruel and personal, and Skyfall (2012) earns its tension from that rather than from a satellite.

Fans who prefer big schemes to personal ones should start with Goldfinger, and those who like a grounded villain should try Casino Royale (2006). The films get the same opinion-led treatment in james bond movies ranked.