Top 10 Brad Dourif Roles (Besides Chucky)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest features one of Brad Dourif’s first film roles, yet it’s still one of the actor’s most beloved performances. Directed by Miloš Forman, the film stars Jack Nicholson as a new patient committed to a mental asylum. He meets some fascinating characters there, including Dourif’s role as Billy Bibbit.

An anxious stutterer, Billy is a bit of a misfit just looking for companionship. Like the other patients in the ward, something is “off” with the young man, though Dourif makes it impossible not to like him. Thanks to Nicholson’s character, Randle McMurphy, an arrangement is made for Billy to sleep with a lady friend named Candy (Marya Small). After the dreadful Miss Ratched (Louise Fletcher) catches them together, she threatens Billy with severe consequences, leading to tragic results.

RELATED: Top 10 Bill Paxton Movie Roles Ever

The movie also became a big hit during the awards season, and Dourif received plenty of recognition. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards and won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. Additionally, Dourif won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year (Actor).

Right at the start of his career, Dourif had made his exceptional acting talent very clear.

Someone like Brad Dourif seems perfect for a role in a David Lynch film, and this epic pairing first happened in 1984. Based on the 1965 novel of the same name by Frank Herbert, Lynch’s Dune is a sci-fi film set in 10191. It follows the story of two rival families fighting for control of the planet Arrakis’ supply of “the spice”—an extremely valuable substance found nowhere else in the universe.

Kyle MacLachlan leads the cast as protagonist Paul Atreides and many well-known names join him in the ensemble cast. Some notable names to appear include Patrick Stewart, Max von Sydow, Dean Stockwell, and even Sting (the singer, not the wrestler). Of course, Dourif also has a very entertaining role in the film, portraying Piter De Vries. The character is a “Mentat,” meaning he’s a type of human specifically trained to mimic the functions of computers, which have been banned across the universe.

Knowing Dourif would be perfect for the role, Lynch called him personally to convince him to accept the part after initially turning it down. After reading more about it, Dourif embraced Piter to the fullest, adding his own quirks to the character to further integrate himself into the role.

“Really, instead of making it about what he does, I got more into what a Mentat is,” Dourif explains in a 2016 interview with AV Club. “I started to create a lot of little side stories for myself. I created a hand language so that Piter was always talking with his hands, either repeating what he was saying out loud or saying something different.”

Brad Dourif is no stranger to Stephen King adaptations, appearing in the 1990 film Graveyard Shift. Based on a short story by King, the movie follows drifter John Hall (David Andrews) looking for work in Maine. He is hired to work the “graveyard shift,” cleaning the basement of a textile mill infested with rats, only to discover a carnivorous creature down there looking to feast upon the workers.

Dourif has a prominent role in the film as a local exterminator, Tucker Cleveland, hired by the mill’s foreman to take care of the rat problem. However, Cleveland makes it clear he knows it’s a losing battle and that the mill should just close. Because so many rats seem to exhibit higher intelligence than average, Cleveland knows the plant is doomed but still has no idea just how much more dangerous things really are. Of course, Cleveland has a run-in with the creature later in the film.

Related: Top 10 Robert Englund Roles (Besides Freddy Krueger)

Tucker Cleveland is an awesome character made all the more charismatic by Dourif’s portrayal. We certainly would have enjoyed seeing him play the role in another film, but Graveyard Shift wasn’t the kind of movie meant to have a prequel.

Ignoring the events of the first Exorcist sequel, The Exorcist III takes place 17 years after the first movie. The story was conceived by the writer of the original novel, William Peter Blatty, along with the first film’s director, William Friedkin. After Friedkin left the project, Blatty assumed directorial duties, and the film was much better received than The Exorcist II: Heretic, which had no involvement from the pair whatsoever.

Brad Dourif plays an important role in The Exorcist III, portraying a Zodiac Killer-inspired serial murderer, the Gemini Killer. Although the character was executed many years prior, a new series of murders occurs which fit the Gemini’s M.O. It is soon discovered that the long-dead serial killer is now using possession to continue his killing spree, with the assistance of the same demon who once possessed Regan MacNeil.

At various points in the film, the preacher possessed by the serial killer’s spirit takes the form of how the Gemini Killer looked 17 years prior, as portrayed by Dourif. It certainly wouldn’t be the only time Dourif would play a psychotic murderer in his career, but it definitely stands out as one of his creepiest performances.

In 1996, Brad Dourif appeared as crewman Lon Suder on the sci-fi TV series Star Trek: Voyager. Although he was a Betazoid rather than something like a Borg or Klingon, Suder was still somehow one of the eeriest characters from Star Trek series lore. His demeanor was off-putting, and the character’s jet-black eyes looked super creepy.

Suder first appeared in the episode “Meld,” where he is revealed as the culprit behind multiple murders on the ship. To understand the motivation behind Suder’s killings, Tuvok performs a “mind meld” with him, which lets the two telepathically share their thoughts. This turns out to be a nearly fatal mistake, as Tuvok starts to inherit Suder’s murderous tendencies after the meld.

RELATED: Top 10 Tony Todd Roles (Besides Candyman)

Placed in the brig after the events of “Meld,” Suder later returned in the two-part episode “Basics.” In this story, only Suder and the holographic Doctor are left on Voyager after the crew is stranded on a desolate planet. Despite his sinister past, Suder assists the Doctor in rescuing the crew, giving the character his redemption.

Released five years after Alien 3 in 1997, Alien Resurrection sought to reinvent the popular sci-fi franchise. It brought back Sigourney Weaver by explaining her character Ellen Ripley had been cloned, and the new story is set on a spaceship used to host the illegal breeding of Xenomorphs.

In Resurrection, Brad Dourif plays Dr. Jonathan Gediman, one of the researchers involved with cloning Ripley. He’s a bit of an oddball, as the character is shown taunting one of the aliens behind the presumed safety of clear glass. Showing no fear, the doctor mimics the expressions of the Xenomorph, heavily agitating the extra-terrestrial creature. Of course, things go to Hell soon after when the aliens escape, and Dr. Gediman is among the first to be killed.

Given his early death, Dourif’s role in Alien: Resurrection is very small. Yet, along with Sigourney Weaver and Winona Ryder, he provides one of the most memorable characters in the movie.

Gríma Wormtongue is a sinister character from J. R. R. Tolkien’s popular Lord of the Rings book series, who was later brought to life on the big screen in the popular movies. For the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Brad Dourif was cast as Wormtongue, joining an ensemble cast of other expertly cast actors. He first appeared in the second movie, The Two Towers, later reprising the role in The Return of the King.

Although the novels inspired the films, director Peter Jackson insisted on each actor making the roles their own. This includes having Dourif shave his eyebrows at Jackson’s suggestion, giving the character an immediate sense of unease. The actors were also encouraged to provide their own ideas for their characters, as Dourif says everyone in the films who had a spoken line had their own writer’s meetings. This means a lot of what we see from Wormtongue on-screen comes from Dourif’s creative input.

RELATED: 12 Killer Part 3 Horror Sequels We Love

“Rather than having an idea of what Wormtongue should be, they wanted MY Wormtongue,” Dourif says about the role. “This was really true of everybody. And I think that’s one of the things that really brings the film to life is that they really cared so much about what we as actors could bring to it.”

Airing for three seasons from 2004 to 2006, HBO’s Deadwood was perhaps a bit ahead of its time. Although ratings weren’t high enough to keep the show going during its run, its cult following has only grown tremendously since then. It has led to an upcoming revival in the form of a movie sequel featuring Brad Dourif reprising the role he previously played on the gritty Western series.

On Deadwood, Dourif plays resident physician Dr. Amos Cochran, known to the citizens of Deadwood as Doc Cochran. With fans, the doc is one of the most beloved characters, thanks to the tremendous way he is portrayed in the series. Throughout all three seasons, Doc Cochran consistently remained an essential character. Fans of the show can never forget some of his very memorable monologues, including the time the doctor broke down while praying for God to end a dying reverend’s suffering.

Fortunately, we’ll all get to see Dourif as Doc Cochran once again when the Deadwood movie premieres on HBO on May 31.

Rob Zombie is known for filling up his movies with familiar horror stars, and the Halloween reboot was no exception. In the film, Brad Dourif starred as Sheriff Leigh Brackett, father of Laurie’s good friend Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris). The remake saw Dourif taking over the role originally played by Charles Cyphers in the 1978 film, which was also excellent in its own way.

Dourif’s portrayal of the character vastly differed from the original, making Brackett unique and a memorable part of the 2007 movie.

Dourif reprised the role when Zombie made Halloween II in 2009 and again remained one of the brightest spots. Due to his performance, it’s hard not to feel for Sheriff Brackett when he finds his daughter’s remains following her brutal murder at the hands of Michael Myers. For what it’s worth, at least Brackett himself survives both films.

By 2018, Dourif had taken on dozens of film and TV roles, playing a wide variety of characters. At this stage of his career, he wanted to appear only in roles that interested him personally. This is why he initially wasn’t going to appear in the 2008 creature feature Wildling, changing his mind after a creative meeting with director Fritz Böhm.

“I told him about how as a parent I was interested in the idea of it, but that I wanted to play the character in a certain way,” Dourif said in a Rue Morgue interview. “We worked through it and after our discussion I wanted to be a part of the film. It was really the theme of fatherhood that compelled me to take it on.”

RELATED: Top 10 ’80s Slashers That Never Had a Sequel

In Wildling, Dourif portrays a father figure known as “Daddy” to a teenage girl named Anna (Bel Powley). He’s been keeping her locked up in the attic her entire life, insisting it’s for her own safety. Daddy tells Anna about a deadly creature, the Wildling, who has eaten every other child. Daddy even electrifies the door handle to ensure she remains in her room.

Things only get crazier from there when Daddy attempts suicide, which lands both of them in a nearby hospital. As it turns out, the man called Daddy is a very layered character, and he has his reasons for caring for Anna all these years and why he’s been keeping her locked away.

Wildling is an underrated film with a unique story and expert performances, so if you missed this one when it came out last year, we can’t recommend enough you check it out—especially if you’re a fan of Brad Dourif.