25 Best Coen Brother Characters

A nightmare come to life, former boxer Randall "Tex" Cobb's bounty hunter enters Raising Arizona in a ball of fire, setting the movie, and some unfortunate desert creatures, ablaze. His "lone biker of the apocalypse" riffs on The Road Warrior, but he's also the embodiment of ex-con H.I. McDonough's criminal past coming back to haunt him, the last gasp of his childish id before the responsibilities of fatherhood take over for good. He's terrifying but ridiculous, a scowling, cigar-chomping phantom just waiting to be seen through, and the last look on his face reveals just how little he knows. SA

It's no wonder the Coens love George Clooney: Few actors can match their ability to swing between serious and (wonderfully) stupid. His Harry Pfarrer magically walks the line between leading man and dumb guy. One minute he's suave, the next he's thunderstruck by wide-plank pine floors. Compared to the other nitwits in Burn After Reading, Clooney's U.S. Marshal seems to have an eye toward a master plan — but it's ultimately revealed his interests lie in elaborate sex toys, not international espionage. JH

The head of Barton Fink's Capitol Studios proclaims himself "bigger and meaner and louder than any kike in this town," and when Michael Lerner says it, you'd be a fool to argue. An affectionate send-up of the Jewish immigrant wheeler-dealers who made Hollywood great — he's part Jack Warner, part Louis B. Mayer — he's passionate in his dedication to the bottom line, and honest in his ruthlessness. And sure, he's a representative of every corporation who's ever choked off an artist's creativity with an ironclad contract. But it's just business. And credit where it's due: Not everyone would follow the Old World's lesson about supplication and be willing to kiss a writer's shoes. SA

Bernie Bernbaum knows how to push buttons. The knotty plot to Miller's Crossing kicks off when John Turturro's Shmatte Kid gives Johnny Caspar the high hat by leaking information on fixed fights. "Bernie ain't satisfied with the honest dollar he can make off the vig!" is the chief complaint (and another example of why the Coens' retro-mob movie is so damn quotable). This breach of ethics won't stand, but it only gets worse when he weasels out of gettin' whacked by squirtin' a few and pleading Tom Regan to "look in his heart." This appeal will only work once, though, no matter the degree of his sister's bed artistry. JH

The slender and virtually silent barber of a small California town circa 1949, Billy Bob Thornton's laconic Ed Crane might blend into the wallpaper if not for the smoldering cigarette that's constantly in his hands. He's the most passive protagonist the Coens have ever written — naturally, he winds up in the electric chair for the one thing he tries to take from this godforsaken world. And yet it's hard not to feel for a guy who surrenders so completely to the meaningless of existence — someone uninterested in swimming against the tide that he'd sooner gawk at a UFO than let it whisk him away from jail. For a man who wasn’t there in the first place, Crane sure is hard to forget. DE

John Goodman can play the genial guy next door with his eyes closed. But it took the Coens to let him turn that archetype inside-out as the kindly traveling salesman who (spoiler!) turns out to be a Nazi serial killer. While his neighbor, lefty screenwriter Barton Fink, waffles on about the woes of the working class, Charlie suffers in silence, although it's not clear whether his pus-filled ear or Barton's platitudes about "the common man" cause him greater pain. When he finally blows his top with a thunderous "You. Don't. Listen!", his fury is hot enough to set the walls ablaze, turning the Hotel Earle into the hell he's been living in for years. SA

Few filmmakers place an emphasis on highlighting the lives of Obese-Americans like the Coens, and this old-timey-music road movie is a cavalcade of cellulite, rotund bellies frequently rounding the frame. None is more striking that John Goodman's one-eyed conniver Big Dan Teague, from whose lips belch blocks of verbiage during a midday repast. O Brother's textures of "old, weird America" are so rich that one can go long stretches forgetting that this is, indeed, an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey and Goodman's malicious Cyclops is the best reminder in the whole film. JH

If they gave out Academy Awards for hand acting, Jennifer Jason Leigh would have been a lock for her portrayal of a hardbitten 1950s newswoman whose wrists seem to end in anxious doves. Modeled on Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, Leigh's "fast-talking career gal" affects a tough outer skin to make it in what's still a man's world; unfortunately, she's laid low by Tim Robbins' Norville Barnes, a guileless dope whose utter lack of calculation throws her for a loop. Her vain insistence that she's "plenty happy" lends a hint of pathos to one of the Coens' most overtly farcical movies, and underlines the danger, for her and everyone else, of pursuing success at all costs. SA

Arguably the most tragic Coen brothers character — and almost certainly the saddest — Llewyn Davis is a bedraggled musician whose talent is only matched by his gift for wasting it. Surly at the best of times, the folk singer only grows more jagged as the grief he shoulders begins to dovetail with the slow-motion death of his creative dreams. Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the curmudgeonly troubadour, but the genius of Oscar Isaac's performance is that he makes going in circles feel like such an immensely moving journey. Davis never became a success, but his struggles make for one hell of a ballad. DE

Coens obsessives know that Holly Hunter was actually the brothers' first choice to play Blood Simple's Abby, a role that eventually went to Joel's future wife Frances McDormand. Instead, her movie career was launched with the Coens' follow-up film, in which she plays a no-nonsense cop who falls for a goofy con (Nicolas Cage) and kidnaps a local newborn since she can't have kids of her own. Raising Arizona is rightly proclaimed as one of the great screwball comedies of the 1980s, but the film's immense bounty of laughs wouldn’t mean much without some heart underneath, which is where Hunter came in. Her Ed is part Lady Macbeth, part moral compass, part quietly fuming voice of reason — she's the straight woman amidst this collection of bozos and reprobates. But the actress also provided the character with a flinty sex appeal that was both vulnerable and alluring. She's the kind of woman you'd want to grow old with in Arizona … or maybe Utah. TG

We're never told exactly where the Coens' Prohibition-era gang saga takes place, but it doesn't take long to figure out who's in charge. Sitting behind his mahogany desk like a more virile Vito Corleone, Albert Finney's un-killable Leo O'Bannon rules whatever city he's in with impunity. A cigar permanently wedged between his lips and a pistol smartly placed on his bedside table, he's the Platonic ideal of an old-school mob boss: "You're exactly as big as I let you be and no bigger and don't you forget it, ever," he barks at an insolent stooge. And his bite is just as big — armed with more than enough great lines to be a vintage Coen character, O'Bannon turns out to be even more articulate with a Tommy gun. DE

A perpetually annoyed ex-con with a flapping jaw and a passion for prostitutes, Carl is Exhibit A for why you do a background check on the men you hire to kidnap your wife. And in Steve Buscemi's hands, he's also the dedicated comic relief of a movie in which even the most tragic characters are a little funny; he's such a loose cannon that nobody can ever feel safe around him (parking lot attendants least of all). Unfortunately for Carl, the bluster and big ambition that make him so much fun to watch are the same things that lead him to make the most reliably fatal mistake that a Coen brothers character can: He convinces himself that he's in control. In some places, that might pan out just fine. In Fargo, it's a one-way ticket to the wood-chipper. DE

There are incredible movie entrances, and then there's the intro that John Turturro's Big Lebowski character gets: A hip-swinging, bowling-ball-licking victory jig set to the Gypsy Kings' version of "Hotel California." In a movie filled with kooks, freaks and SoCal oddballs, this purple-suited pederast is the most outrageous character in the Coens' wake-and-bake noir, and yes, we are counting the nihilists as well. Somehow, Turturro even turns this nutty villain into a sympathetic figure, despite the fact that he's a trash-talker and a registered sex offender. But whether you think Mr. Quintana contains multitudes or is simply a reprobate, one this is certain. Nobody fucks with the Jesus. Nobody. DF

The brothers went Old Testament for their story about a cosmically beleaguered physics professor in Sixties Minnesota, and that makes Larry Gopnik the Job of suburbia. His wife leaves him for the eminently punchable Sy Ableman; one of his students tries to blackmail him; his brother loses his mind; and then things to start to get really bad. Unraveling before our eyes, Larry draws closer to God with every misfortune, but none of the rabbis he seeks for advice are able to tell him the one thing he needs to hear: If you're going to believe in God, it helps to laugh at his jokes. Just look at the parking lot, Larry. DE

"I thought you might be worried about the security … of your shit." George Clooney is famous for playing the Coen brothers' prize-winning idiots, but Brad Pitt perfected the type with his only turn at bat. An overeager personal trainer who finds a CD of meaningless data on the floor of his gym and mistakes it for top-secret CIA information, Chad Feldheimer is what would happen if you took Pitt's character from the Ocean's movies and repeatedly dropped him on his head. Chad's obliviousness is the perfect foil for the actor's cocksure swagger (a work uniform polo shirt has never looked so farcically out of place), and you can't help but laugh at the sight of him dying for the cause of his own confusion. DE

For your foulest, most criminal needs, look no further than M. Emmett Walsh's giddy, scuzzy Detective Loren Vesser. Though a deal with him is hardly in stone, and when opportunity strikes for a double-cross, he'll take it: Why kill two people when you need only kill one, and frame another to boot? Walsh's Texas drawl is so think you can barely make out his dialogue (though what you do hear is vile), but this is a man who thrives on intelligence. Even looking death in the eye is an opportunity for a belly laugh, realizing his killer has no clue about the real score. JH

His name is Herbert, but you can call him H.I. — just keep your goddamned hands off his wife (we're talking to you, Glen!) and don't try to break up his recently acquired family unit. Nicolas Cage's uniquely coiffed ur-hipster doofus is arguably cinema's most lovable recidivist. His life is already a cartoonish maelstrom, and that's before he plots to kidnap one of the Arizona Quints. H.I. is also the type of guy to attract lunatics, so following him will let you meet men who get the menstrual cramps real bad, who offer that there's something wrong with their semen and who, when there were no crawdad, ate sand. But though he's a thief at heart, he's also a dedicated family man, and though his style of parenting ain't Ozzie and Harriet material, any man who'll risk life and limb for some Huggies is okay in our book. JH

When God chooses to strip you of all your self-worth, he doesn't just have your wife leave. He has your wife leave for a schlep like Sy Ableman. With all due respect to Quentin Tarantino and his Nazi-battlin' inglourious bastards: In actor Fred Melamed's hands, the bearded, baritone, uninvited-hugger, Ableman is the cinema's one true Bear Jew. The wine-gifting foil is too absurd a figure to rouse real anger, even when he's suggesting a move to the "eminently habitable" Jolly Roger. Only in dreams does he ever raise his voice (in his baby-blue cap and track suit), and even in death he causes problems both financial and spiritual. Larry Gopnik recognizes him to be a klutz; the community, however, dubs him a "serious man." JH

"Sex. The physical act of love. Do you like it?" They say opposites attract, so it's no wonder that the terminally chill Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski and the eminently severe Maude Lebowski (no relation!) can't keep their hands off of each other. An avant-garde artist who speaks like she fell out of a Thirties class drama and paints like she's trying to make Georgia O'Keeffe look prude, Julianne Moore's Maude is literally the woman of the Dude's dreams. She's also a glorious foil for the Coen brothers' laziest hero because she cares about the central mystery even less than he does. DE

Fans of the original True Grit remember Kim Darby's pixie-cut version of this Western's heroine, all wide eyes and too-big-for-her-britches precociousness. But when the Coen brothers decided to bring Charles Portis' novel to the screen for a second go-round, they upped the steely reserve of the book's narrator, Mattie Ross — and cast a young actress who could portray the character's determination with both a sense of backbone and a bone-deep vulnerability. Hailee Steinfeld's performance rightfully nabbed her an Oscar nomination and kickstarted a career that's now gone from pop songs to a Pitch Perfect movie, but Ross remains the perfect introduce-yourself vehicle for her: A headstrong young lady who doesn't take any guff from no one-eyed gunfighter rascals yet still understands the responsibility that comes with pulling a trigger. She's one of the best of the Coens' strong female characters — you could believe that she's the great, great grandmother of either Ed McDonagh or Marge Gunderson. DF