Why are British people always bag guys in movies?

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Dokken, if you really want to find cause for offense you will. Look at the Brits who have done well in American cinema, Would you seriously tell Ian McKellen, or his agent, that he should not have played Magneto? Or Anthony Hopkins not to play Dr Lecter? How about Alan Rickman playing all the roles he has done so well? American audiences will go see movies with these actors in them. Good luck trying to talk them out of their bread and butter roles. Also you seem to be overlooking the James Bond franchise, all the UK actors that have done well with that idiocy. Yes I do hold Ian Fleming against the UK, those books and movies are idiotic. And Ian Fleming flunked S.O.E. training in WWII, read A Man Called Inteprid by William Stevenson for reference. But Americans love to watch Sean Connery, Timothy Dalton, Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and about 14 other British actors save the world in the most poorly written, implausible, stupid manner that is not possible to do so. In conclusion, is it really a negative for the UK to have Americans asking these people for their autographs, no matter what kind of roles they play?

Look at British movies with all British casts! HOMG! The villains must be British too! O.O

Because you have to act to come across right as a bad guy, or it just ends up hammy. It's not just the fact that bad guys are played by British actors. They're usually played by some of the best British actors.

One of the biggest complaints from critics against a lot of actors is that they can't actually act at all. Every role they play comes across as the same person. The only thing they've got going for them is their looks, and ability to remember their lines.

The 1996 Doctor Who TV movie had an American playing the villain, one who has been played by a British-born (and technically Cockney, given that he was born within the sound of the Bow Bells) half-Spaniard, half-Belgian, and four other Brits, both before and since.

In fact, off hand, I think Paul McGann and Sylvester McCoy were the only two British actors in that, and they both played the same hero....

Also, we have some movies (The Fifth Element, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) where instead of an American villain with a bad British accent there's a British villain with a bad American accent...

Wow, you people watch a lot of movies. In a lot of great 80's flicks the bad guys are british.

DejaQ, Chewbacca is not british. Chebacca growls when it talks. He a big snuffalufagus looking wookie. He not even human

Okay, there are at least 5 Bond films from the 80's that have a British good guy, two of which (A View to a Kill and Licence to Kill) have an American (North and South, respectively) villain, with The Living Daylights having a Dutch-born, Russian villain with an American associate villain. Only For Your Eyes Only (Julian Glover) and Octopussy (Steven Berkoff) have British-born actors playing villains, and they both play foreigners (with Louis Jordan, a French actor, playing another villain in Octopussy).

In the Bond films, out of the main villains, (not counting the spoof version of Casino Royale, or Never Say Never Again), we have the following:

Dr No: Joseph Wiseman (a Canadian made up like a Chinese-German)

Rosa Klebb: Lotte Lenya (Austrian, potraying a Russian)

Goldfinger: Gert Frobe (German)

Emilio Largo: Adolfo Celi (Italian)

Blofeld (1): Donald Pleasance (English. Blofeld was said to be Polish in the novels)

Blofeld (2): Telly Savalas (American, of Greek descent)

Blofeld (3): Charles Gray (English)

Dr Kananga: Yaphet Kotto (American born, but of Cameroonian descent. Royalty as well. Protrays a Caribbean-born man)

Francisco Scaramanga: Christopher Lee (English born, descended from Italian nobles, portraying a British-born, descended from Cubans)

Stromberg: Curd/Curt Jurgens (German, portraying, according to the novel, a Swede)

Hugo Drax: Michael Lonsdale (Anglo-French, portraying a French person)

Kristatos: Julian Glover (English, playing a Greek)

Orlov: Steven Berkoff (English, playing a Russian)

Max Zorin: Christopher Walken (American, portraying a German-born, American raised villain)

Koskov: Jeroen Krabbe (Dutch, playing a Russian)

Sanchez: Robert Davi (American, descended from Italians, portraying a South American villain)

Alec Trevalyan: Sean Bean (British, portraying a Lienz Cossack raised in England)

Elliot Carver: Johnathan Pryce (British)

Elektra King: Sophie Marceau (French, playing an Azerbaijani descnded person)

Gustav Graves: Toby Stephens (British, portraying a North Korean genetically altered into an Argentinian, according to the novel)

Le Chiffre: Mads Mikkelsen (Danish, portraying a presumed Albanian born)

Your logic is infallable, sirrah.

Well none of the humans in Star Wars are British, since Star Wars is in a galaxy far, far away - they don't know what the hell Britain is. And I meant to delete the British actors whose voices you don't hear (because I knew you'd try to hold it against me ), yet Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), David Prowse (Darth Vader), and John Hollis (Lando's Aide) made it.

One thing I find funny about Dr. Who is that all the people (and aliens), all across time and space, have British accents (and the British government always handles interplanetary affairs). But it occurred to me that American movies/shows do the same thing.

Coming back to the topic, though there are a lot of movies that have American bad guys or British good guys, I think the "British bad guy" thing is very common in American movies. But it's not just bad guys, Americans use the British-accent stereotype for other roles, too. One that comes to mind is professor-type characters, like Giles from Buffy. It's just one of those things that Americans somehow associate with British accents.

In Hellsing, a few of the most important protagonists are English (Integra, Seras and Walter). If it makes you feel any better, the first major enemies they faced were American (Luke and Jan Valentine).

They have a british accent though. The people in a costume don't count. Chewbacca just makes growls and Darth Vader voice is by James Earl Jones

In bond films all the bad guys are always russians

That was my point. I said that they shouldn't have been on the list and that I was aware that you would use those instances to discredit my entire argument.

Now I recall a funny clip in a documentary before they dubbed in Chewie's growls, in which Chewie says "The old man's gone mad."

No, you idiot. Didn't you read my list? In the novels, most of the villains were Russian or working for them. But in the films...

In the movies the bad guys are russians. I read part of your list, not all of it. I don't find Bond films or books interesting. But, most of the bad guys in the films are supposed to be russians, even if they're played by some british or american person.