The Most Accurate Pop Culture Portrayals Of Serial Killers
While the appetite for true-crime documentaries appears to have only developed in the streaming age, the demand for the true-crime adaptation has been around since Hollywood’s Golden Age. And real-life serial killers have often been the biggest sources of fascination. From contemporary names such as Evan Peters and Charlize Theron, to silver-screen icons like Tony Curtis and Robert Mitchum, here’s a look at 20 actors who went over to the dark side in the name of entertainment.
1. Evan Peters as Jeffrey Dahmer: Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story
Jeremy Renner, Rusty Sneary, and Ross Lynch have all portrayed Jeffrey Dahmer since the notorious serial killer, who murdered and then dismembered no fewer than 17 young men, was finally caught in the early 1990s. But with ten episodes of the Ryan Murphy drama to inhabit the role, Evan Peters’ depiction has undoubtedly been the most well-rounded.
It’s little surprise that the actor picked up an Emmy nomination and won a Golden Globe for his leading performance in the controversial Netflix series Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
Peters had to play Dahmer in his youth and across his horrific killing spree as a depraved adult, and he nails the murderer’s mannerisms, and emotionless way of communicating, throughout. Peters had been no stranger to playing real-life psychopaths.
In American Horror Story: Cult alone he showed up as Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Charles Manson. But it was as Dahmer that he got the chance to paint his most nuanced picture of a man who became the personification of evil.
2. Oliver Cooper as David Berkowitz: Mindhunter
David Fincher’s ‘canceled before its time’ Netflix drama saw a whole host of real-life monsters get the small-screen treatment. And Oliver Cooper’s performance as ‘Son of Sam’ David Berkowitz was one of the most impressive.
The show sure kept viewers waiting to see what the actor could do. Although the murderer was referenced in the very first episode of Mindhunter’s first season, he didn’t actually show up until the follow-up. Luckily, all the anticipation proved to be worth it.
The acclaimed show explores how Berkowitz managed to dupe officials into thinking that he had a genuine mental illness: the killer famously insisted that he’d embarked on his spree on the orders of the demon-possessed pooch that lived in his neighborhood.
And Cooper is suitably chilling, none more so than when he’s pressured by Holden into admitting that his shaggy-dog tale was all a lie. Yes, even when the truth comes out, Berkowitz shows absolutely no signs of remorse for his wickedness.
3. Damon Harriman as Charles Manson: Mindhunter
Okay, so we know that Charles Manson technically didn’t hold a knife to anyone himself. The cult leader famously got his minions to do his dirty work for him during the series of infamous murders that took place across California in the summer of 1969.
But he was still found guilty of first-degree murder of seven individuals, including Hollywood star Sharon Tate, for pushing his depraved ideology onto his followers. It’s little wonder, therefore, that Tinseltown remains fascinated with the man. But Damon Harriman has a pretty good claim to be Manson’s most authentic on-screen portrayal.
Harriman sent a chill down viewers’ spines from the moment he first appeared in the second season of Netflix hit Mindhunter. Yes, the actor certainly did his homework, effortlessly replicating the quirks that had made Manson such a magnetic presence. Quentin Tarantino certainly must have been impressed, too.
The director also cast Harriman as the cult leader in his love letter to ‘60s cinema, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. On this occasion, Manson’s murderous followers are slain themselves in a memorable revisionist finale.
4. Cameron Britton as Ed Kemper: Mindhunter
You can understand why Cameron Britton was cast as Ed Kemper by the Mindhunter team on an aesthetic level. When he sports a mustache and puts on a pair of spectacles, the actor looks the spitting image of the man who killed eight individuals in the early 1970s, including his very own mom.
But there’s more to Britton’s performance than his looks. The star also convinces when it comes to the general demeanor of the man dubbed by the press as “The Co-Ed Killer.”
One of the show’s most memorable recurring characters, Kemper is first seen being interviewed in the first season’s second episode, where he reveals the trauma he suffered as a child. What’s most chilling about these scenes is that much of Britton’s dialog has been copied verbatim from Kemper’s taped confessions.
This means that when you’re hearing the character discussing decapitating and burying the head of his mom, you’re essentially hearing the real recollection. The authenticity of the scripts no doubt helped Britton embody the character even more effectively.
5. Michael Filipowich as William Pierce: Mindhunter
Mindhunter’s uncanny ability to match the perfect actor to the serial killer continued when it gave Michael Filipowich the role of William Pierce. In one particular episode, the show’s special-effects team uses the latest digital tech to replace the criminal’s face with the actor’s in a photo.
But Pierce looks so much like Filipowich in the snap taken at his Appling County Jail cell anyway that they could have left the original intact and no one would have noticed the difference!
But just like his castmates, Filipowich had more to offer than just a likeness to the man who’s believed to have killed nine people, including the senator of South Carolina James Cuttino’s teenage daughter Peggy. The actor also gets under the skin of the murderer.
None more so than in his interviews with the Behavioral Science Unit run by the FBI. It’s here where the show takes some artistic licence, though, as there’s no record of Pierce ever having been spoken to directly by this particular team.
6. Robert Aramayo as Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr.: Mindhunter
The youngest monster featured in Mindhunter was the man who played a major part in the Houston Mass Murders. Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. was aged just 18 when he was convicted of procuring the victims of a serial killer.
Dean A. Corll also subjected these young men to sexual assault and torture before taking their lives. He ended up being killed himself during a fight with Henley Jr., who then gave himself up to police. Quite the role, then, for actor Robert Aramayo.
As with Ed Kemper in the same Netflix show, Henley Jr.’s words were directly copied from the transcripts of real-life interviews, although in this case they didn’t originate from the initial police investigation, but long after the man had been convicted.
Still, Aramayo managed to make lines such as “A boy got involved with a murderer, that’s all that happened,” sound as though they were coming out of the mouth of a much-younger criminal. The actor was particularly good at replicating the aloof and arrogant way in which Henley Jr. would communicate.
7. Christopher Livingston as Wayne Williams: Mindhunter
Wayne Williams entered the Mindhunter picture in its second season alongside other new famous faces David Berkowitz and Charles Manson. The man found himself in prison after being found guilty of killing two adults.
But he’s also believed to have been behind the disappearances, and possible murders, of more than 20 children who went missing in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Christopher Livingston was the man tasked with portraying one of the more complicated characters in the hit Netflix drama.
But the actor was more than up to the challenge. Yes, Livingston delivered a suitably unnerving performance as a man who 40 years on from the case known as The Atlanta Child Murders still protests his innocence. Although he failed to pass several polygraph tests, Williams insists that he had nothing to do with the missing children.
In fact, he’s put forward the theory that the Ku Klux Klan were responsible for the heinous crimes, and that this was swept under the carpet by authorities in order to prevent a war between races.
8. Zac Efron as Ted Bundy: Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
Tinseltown has never been afraid to make real-life serial killers look a little more photogenic when it comes to the true-crime adaptation. But this was taken to new extremes in 2019.
Yes, Zac Efron, the heartthrob who’d risen to fame in the all-singing, all-dancing phenomenon High School Musical, was cast as arguably modern America’s most famous murderer. Sure, Ted Bundy was better looking than your average psychopath. But he didn’t exactly have a perfectly chiseled face and a six-pack.
That said, Bundy was no stranger to teenage adulation. In fact, during his trial, a significant number of young female admirers pledged their allegiance to him outside the courthouse. And Efron soon proved that there was more to his casting than his pin-up good looks.
Yes, the actor delivered one of the finest performances of his career in Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. The film’s title was inspired by the comments the judge made after sentencing Bundy to death for the murders of at least 30 women in the mid-1970s.
9. Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos: Monster
Charlize Theron is an outlier on this list, as she’s the only actor to have portrayed a female serial killer who acted entirely alone. The glamorous Hollywood star stripped away all of her vanity to make her performance as Aileen Wuornos look as convincing as possible in Patty Jenkins’ 2003 biopic Monster.
In fact, it’s hard to believe that it’s Theron underneath all her disheveled clothes, rough complexion, and eyebrows bleached blonde. And she was rightfully rewarded with a Best Actress win at the Academy Awards.
Monster depicts Wuornos’ tragic tale from the very first of her seven killings, all of whom were men, in 1989 up until her death by lethal injection in 2002. The serial killer was given capital punishment for six of these murders despite claiming that they were all carried out as a form of self-defense.
Theron later told Marie Claire that she had been initially reluctant to take on the role over concerns that she wouldn’t be able to do the part justice until she was convinced by director Jenkins.
10. Tony Curtis as Albert DeSalvo: The Boston Strangler
Tony Curtis had enjoyed acclaim in the late 1950s in comedic fare such as The Sweet Smell of Success and Some Like It Hot. But after failing to sustain this level of success throughout much of the following decade, the Hollywood legend decided to mix things up a bit.
In 1968 he played very much against type by accepting the part of Albert DeSalvo, a.k.a. the man better known as The Boston Strangler. This nickname also inspired the title of the film, too.
DeSalvo’s killing spree took place at the beginning of the ‘60s and robbed no fewer than 13 women across the state of Massachusetts of their lives. Although Curtis wouldn’t have been many people’s first choice to take on such a wicked real-life character, the silver-screen star proved to be surprisingly convincing.
In fact, he was even rewarded with a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the man who just a year earlier had been sent to prison. DeSalvo would become a victim himself in 1973 when he was fatally stabbed by an inmate.
11. Dominic West as Fred West: Appropriate Adult
For several years it was hard to see Dominic West as anything other than Jimmy McNulty, the Baltimore cop who certainly didn’t play by the rules, in perhaps the finest prestige TV crime drama ever made, The Wire.
But in 2011 the actor made everyone forget about his previous roles with an astonishing turn as one of Britain’s most reviled serial killers. Yes, sporting some thick curly hair and a terrible taste in knitwear, the pin-up was almost unrecognizable as Fred West.
Dominic was joined in the cast by Monica Dolan, who played Fred’s spouse Rose. The depraved husband and wife carried out multiple murders in their Gloucester home, a place that would become dubbed by the media as the ‘House of Horrors.’
Fred was also found guilty of killing several other individuals without his usual accomplice across his 20-year reign of terror. While Rose is now nearly three decades into her whole-life prison term, Fred killed himself while in custody in 1995.
12. Maxine Peake as Myra Hindley: See No Evil: The Moors Murders
Maxine Peake has established herself as one of the finest British actresses of her generation. And in 2006 she took on the role of one of the most-despised women in modern British history. Peake followed in the footsteps of another much-loved thespian, Samantha Morton, by portraying the notorious Myra Hindley.
On this occasion, it was in See No Evil: The Moors Murders, a two-part crime drama screened on ITV which was made with the consent of the families affected by the hugely disturbing case.
Sporting Hindley’s infamous blonde beehive, Peake was nothing short of a revelation in the two-parter. And Sean Harris delivered an equally impressive, and equally unsettling, turn as her partner-in-crime Ian Brady.
The pair made headlines across the world in the mid-1960s after they were found guilty of killing five children across Manchester and burying their bodies across the nearby countryside. Tragically, one of their victims has never been found, and with both Hindley and Brady now dead, their remains are unlikely to be ever discovered.
13. Michael Rooker as Henry Lee Lucas: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Character actor Michael Rooker is now better-known to most — particularly the younger generations — for playing the characters of Merle Dixon and Yondu Udonta in The Walking Dead and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises, respectively.
But his breakthrough in the 1980s came with the haunting portrayal of a serial killer who was anything but fantastical. In fact, if you believe his very own claims, then Henry Lee Lucas is undeniably one of the most prolific serial killers in American history.
Yes, Lucas confessed to killing a different person every week between the years of 1975 and 1983: this would take his tally to somewhere around the 400 mark. He was only ever found guilty of 11, which although not in the same ballpark, is still a disturbing figure.
Considering how convincing his depiction was, you might be surprised to learn that Rooker was very much an acting novice when he took on the role. In fact, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer was the star’s very first screen performance!
14. Martin Sheen as Kit Carruthers: Badlands
Directed by the legendary Terence Malick, Badlands is widely regarded as one of the great crime films of the 1970s. But you might not know that it was based on a real case.
Yes, 15 years before influencing the character played by Martin Sheen, Charles Starkweather embarked on a murderous frenzy with his much-younger girlfriend in tow. Then aged only 19, the criminal took the lives of 11 individuals across Wyoming and Nebraska before finally being captured.
Sheen had been a little older than Starkweather at the time of the shoot. He also played a man named Kit, not Charles. But the actor still captured the essence of his real-life counterpart, as his Best Actor Award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival would suggest.
Discussing his casting with The Hollywood Reporter decades later, Sheen said, “It was the first time in my life that I realized I had an opportunity to play an ‘important’ part in a film.”
15. Robert Mitchum as Reverend Harry Powell: The Night of the Hunter
Famous for his charm, charisma, and suave appearance, Robert Mitchum was initially considered to be miscast when news emerged that he’d be playing a man based on a real-life serial killer. But the actor is a bona fide Hollywood icon for good reason.
And he made all the naysayers eat humble pie with a convincing performance as Harry Powell, a reverend inspired by Dutch-American Harry F. Powers, whose victims are ensnared via the novel method of a Lonely Hearts column.
Powers also pretended to be in the mood for love to reel in those he killed purely for financial reasons. Davis Grubb, the writer of the same-named 1953 novel that The Night of the Hunter film adapted, took inspiration from the real-life criminal for his protagonist.
The movie doesn’t actually show any of Powers’ killings in front of the camera. But Mitchum’s suitably menacing performance meant you didn’t need to see the crimes unfold to understand his sense of evil.
16. Paul Walter Hauser as Larry Hall: Black Bird
When we first see Larry Hall in Apple TV+’s acclaimed drama Black Bird, it’s hard to equate him with the man suspected of being behind so many heinous crimes. He’s softly spoken, to the point where it’s hard to make out what he’s saying.
He’s very well-mannered, and he comes across as quite vulnerable himself. But this is later discovered to be all an act. And his unraveling is played to perfection by the mustachioed character actor Paul Walter Hauser.
Considering how many young women he is said to have murdered — he admitted to 35 but is believed to be behind a further 15 — it's a surprise that Hall’s name isn’t particularly well-known compared to the other serial killers of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
But Hauser’s measured turn opposite Taron Egerton’s impressive prisoner-turned-informant Keene means that he’s now far more well-known among true-crime circles. The actor also picked up a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and took home a Critics Choice Television Award for his performance.
17. Zach Villa as Richard Ramirez: American Horror Story
American Horror Story has surely featured more portrayals of real-life serial killers than any other TV drama in the history of the small screen. And one of its most memorable depictions appeared courtesy of Zach Villa.
The actor stole the show in 1980 — the ninth season of Ryan Murphy’s scarefest anthology — as the notorious Richard Ramirez. The man embarked on a 14-month reign of terror in the mid-1980s, earning the nickname “The Night Stalker” after attacking and killing multiple women.
Murphy was criticized for supposedly glamorizing a man who caused so much pain to so many people. After all, Villa essentially plays the character like a rock star. But Ramirez was a highly charismatic figure, too.
It’s why, like Bundy before him, a throng of women turned up to his trial to offer their support. Of course, the judge could see through all the bravado. He gave Ramirez the death penalty in 1989; the serial killer was still on death row when he passed away 24 years later.
18. Darren Criss as Andrew Cunanan: American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
Thanks to his all-singing role as student Blaine Anderson in musical phenomenon Glee, Darren Criss had positioned himself as your average clean-cut, butter-wouldn’t-melt boy next door. Not the most obvious candidate, then, to depict a man who went on a murder frenzy in the summer of 1997.
And yet Criss played Andrew Cunanan so perfectly in the second season of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story anthology that he was showered with awards, including Primetime Emmys and Golden Globes.
Criss had to do everything from kill in cold blood to dance in his underwear while depicting the man who gunned down Gianni Versace outside his home. But the Italian fashion guru wasn’t Cunanan’s only victim.
Yes, while Versace’s death inevitably grabbed all the attention, he was just one of five people killed in the space of just three months. Cunanan also turned the gun on himself to evade capture, with Criss perfectly recapturing this monster’s sense of narcissism, paranoia, and privilege.
19. John Cusack as Robert Hansen: The Frozen Ground
Thriller The Frozen Ground didn’t exactly set the box office alight when it hit cinemas in 2013. But John Cusack’s performance as Robert Hansen is one of the more under-rated true-crime turns of recent years.
The actor, so often the good guy in his filmography, plays against type as the man who kidnapped, assaulted, and killed no fewer than 17 women over the space of 12 years. His crimes all took place in Alaska, hence the film’s ice-cold title.
The film would have looked very different had the initial casting plans gone ahead. Nicolas Cage, who plays State Trooper Jack Halcombe, had been poised to depict the man known as the Butcher Baker. But the Hollywood eccentric graciously passed on the role so that Cusack could show more of his range.
The latter told Entertainment Tonight that he had worked hard with filmmaker Scott Walker to take advantage of the opportunity. He said, “We would spend hours discussing each scene and each line and how to deliver those lines, so that he doesn’t seem to be over-the-top and suddenly something which isn’t true to how a real serial killer is.”
20. Tahar Rahim as Charles Sobhraj: The Serpent
“I always wanted to explore evil in a character,” Tahar Rahim told website Collider about his role in Netflix drama The Serpent. He added, “When you’re an actor, the challenge is to find characters that are very distant from your true nature. I was scrolling down and I read Charles Sobhraj, I’m like, ‘Whoa.’”
And there’s a reason why Rahim was taken aback by the offer to play such an individual. He had dreamed about portraying the criminal for the best part of 20 years!
And Sobhraj was certainly different enough from Rahim’s true nature, too. Alongside several accomplices, Sobhraj robbed, drugged, and took the lives of several backpackers visiting South Asia’s hippie trail in the 1970s.
If you’re wondering where The Serpent title comes from, then that was the nickname given to the killer for his slippery ability to evade the police. Sobhraj’s story was so unbelievable that the show’s producers had to tone things down so then viewers wouldn’t switch off in incredulity.