Ranked: Wes Anderson's Most Memorable Characters - Page 5 of 7

30. Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston in “The Royal Tenenbaums”)
Credit to Anderson for often giving his older female characters actual personalities, not to mention sex lives, but enacted by the ineffably sexy Huston, here Etheline is believably both a matriarch and a paramour twice over.

29. Ludwig (Harvey Keitel in “The Grand Budapest Hotel”)
His second collaboration with Anderson after his small turn in “Moonrise,” here Keitel gets to go all-out as Ludwig, the hardened, bald, heavily tattooed fellow inmate of Gustav’s who is flattered when the escape plan map he’s scrawled shows “great artistic promise.”

28. Francis (Owen Wilson in “The Darjeeling Limited”)
It doesn’t particularly hang together as a film, but ‘Darjeeling”s portrait of brotherhood is cherishable, and Wilson, cast a little against type as the bossy, take-charge older brother, is a particular treat, playing most of the film bruised and bandaged to boot.

27. Jopling (Willem Dafoe in “The Grand Budapest Hotel”)
If Anderson’s characterization is sometimes accused of being cartoonish, you won’t find too much evidence to the contrary in Dafoe’s terrifically fun live-action Muttley (to Adrien Brody‘s Dastardly). Even to the point that he kills a cat (as well as several people).

26. Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray in “The Royal Tenenbaums”)
Heartbroken neurologist and oft-cuckolded husband of Margot, apparently St. Clair was modeled on the recently deceased Oliver Sacks. But Murray brings a soul-deep melancholy to the role, as well as an irresistible interaction with his test subject Dudley, that makes him entirely his own man.

null25. Rat (Willem Dafoe in “Fantastic Mr Fox”)
Another of Anderson’s stock characters given a great spin by one of his regulars, here Dafoe voices enforcer/factotum Rat, who serves as security for nasty old Franklin Bean. As often with this sort of sidekick, his snivelling deviousness kind of eclipses the real baddie.

24. Pele Dos Santos (Seu Jorge in “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou”)
An inspired flourish in ‘Life Aquatic’ saw Brazilian singer/songwriter Seu Jorge perform covers of David Bowie songs as part of the film’s fictional universe. He has little to do otherwise, but remains one of the most memorable aspects of the film.

23. Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori/F. Murray Abraham in “The Grand Budapest Hotel”)
If you’re going to sell us on a big story-within-a-story-within-a-story format, better make sure the chief storyteller is as grizzled and enigmatic a raconteur as F. Murray Abraham, and the younger version is played with the kind of bright-eyed, joyous freshness that newcomer Tony Revolori brought.

22. Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson in “The Royal Tenenbaums”)
Poor Richie, the Bjorn Borg-esque ex-tennis star who is suicidally lovelorn for his own sister, might be the most tragic character in Anderson’s rogues gallery. And it’s a showcase for the more dramatic, albeit droll, talents of Luke Wilson, who manages to sell incestuous desire as strangely romantic.

21. Social Services (Tilda Swinton in “Moonrise Kingdom”)
Somewhere between Mary Poppins and a Satanic nun, the unnamed, immovable object that is “Social Services” is given gleeful life by a brilliantly stoic Swinton. Threatening a child with electroshock therapy or unflappably fielding phone calls, she’s a perfectly sly comment on an impersonal, uncaring system.