The 11 Best Performances In Tim Burton Movies, Ranked

This article contains spoilers for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

This week marked the return not only of Michael Keaton into the eponymous role of Beetlejuice in the long-awaited sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (our review here), but the return of Tim Burton to the big screen. Though it’s only been five-plus years since his last feature film — the unmemorable and unnecessary “Dumbo” remake for Walt Disney Pictures — it feels like it’s been a lot longer since Burton had room to flex his unique visual muscles and deliver a distinctive film full of flair. But while Burton’s movies are perhaps best known for their flights of fancy and dark whimsy, his filmography is also replete with memorable and rightfully beloved performances from some excellent actors, including Keaton. With “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” about to dominate at the box office and boasting an impressive ensemble including some new actors, let’s rank the 11 best performances in Tim Burton’s films. Will Beetlejuice make an appearance? Well … let’s put it this way — the question isn’t whether or not he’s on the list, it’s how high is he placed.

There are few more odious characters in the filmography of Tim Burton than Judge Turpin in his cinematic adaptation of the iconic Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” Turpin is a laughably corrupt judge in the venal London cityscape, ruining the lives of anyone he sees unfit and demonizing women for a laugh. In short, it’s saying something that while the title of the story refers to a bloodthirsty barber played in the film by Burton’s longtime collaborator Johnny Depp, you kind of sympathize with Sweeney Todd simply because of how awful Turpin is. And so, it’s almost too natural that the most apropos actor to bring Turpin to life on the big screen was the late Alan Rickman. By the mid-2000s, Rickman was as well-known for playing action-movie villains like Hans Gruber in the original “Die Hard” as he was to a younger audience for portraying Severus Snape in the “Harry Potter” films. (Fun sidebar: he reunites with a fellow “Harry Potter” alum in the film, in the form of Timothy Spall as Turpin’s henchman Beadle Bamford.) Though his voice may not have been as pompous or full-throated as those of the men who had portrayed Turpin in the mostly sung-through stage musical, his oily and devious tones match his character perfectly. There’s never a moment in his performance where you sympathize with Judge Turpin, but you can’t find a better actor to create such a hissable villain.

There is a lot going on in Tim Burton’s new film, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” No doubt some of the legacy sequel is trying to deliberately recall our memories of the 1988 comedy classic, with yet another beautiful but dour young woman lured to darkness by the ghastly bio-exorcist whose name makes up the title times two, more artsy touches by a New York yuppie, and further explorations of the black-comic bureaucracy of the afterlife. But there are a lot of new touches in the film, like Lydia Deetz’s new beau, a New Age-y scumbag portrayed with sly and gleeful brio by Justin Theroux. Against other new-to-the-series actors like Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci (as Beetlejuice’s long-thought-dead ex-wife who’s out for revenge), and Jenna Ortega (as Lydia’s estranged daughter), Theroux stands out because he gets to be as slimy as possible while also staying entirely human. It’s clear to mostly everyone surrounding Lydia that the producer of her reality show “Ghost House” — in which Lydia uses her actual gift to see the dead to attempt to exorcise haunted abodes — is using her to get ahead. (It says something that her stepmother Delia sees through this guy.) But Lydia remains mildly charmed, or simply unwilling, to cut him loose until Beetlejuice helpfully injects the guy with truth serum in the climax so he can reveal the depths of his venality. Theroux isn’t the only one here who looks delighted to be on set, but his character Rory hits the right comic notes, all the way to when Lydia knocks him off the screen (literally). 

More than 20 years removed, “Big Fish” still feels like something of an outlier in Tim Burton’s career. With its fanciful depiction of a man whose propensity for telling tall tales had made it so hard for his grown son to delineate the truth from fiction, it’s a touching, beautiful film. It’s not surprising to learn that Steven Spielberg had once been attached to the film, but Burton found the emotional heart of the story through vibrant and charismatic performances from an ensemble including Alison Lohman, Danny DeVito (about whom more soon), Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, and most importantly, Ewan McGregor. Aside from the fact that McGregor really does look like a spitting image of the young Albert Finney (they both play the man who loves tall tales at different ages), the Scots actor is instantly incredibly charming and raffish, as enervating because of his inability to just tell the truth as much as he’s a delightful rake of a figure in the lives of those around him. Part of what makes “Big Fish” stand out is its striking and surprisingly colorful take on the Southern Gothic aesthetic, but what has made the film’s emotion hit so hard even now is its core performance. You have to believe that Edward Bloom could charm so many people not only because of his looks but because of his inimitable personality; as much as Finney gets to the gruff exterior of the older man whose son is unwilling to hear him, McGregor cuts a fine figure of Edward as a young man.

In some ways, “Beetlejuice” feels like the ur-text of the films of Tim Burton, even if it wasn’t his debut feature. The unexpected blend of comedy and horror, the matter-of-fact use of stop-motion animation, the outlandish production design, and other facets are all things we heavily associate with his films. But the same is true with archetypal characters, like the Goth girl looking for an escape from a seemingly hum-drum life. For that type, we have Winona Ryder in her first collaboration with Burton over decades. Her wide eyes, her sarcastic demeanor, and her hidden naivete make Lydia Deetz a charming audience stand-in once the insanity increases in the old Maitland house. You can understand why Beetlejuice holds a torch for her through this movie and in the intervening decades that lead up to the events of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” (And whatever else is true of the new film’s overstuffed script, Lydia is essentially the main character, even if the actress playing her is billed second.) Ryder was able to serve as a kind of cinematic avatar for Generation X in films like this and “Heathers,” offering a rebuke to more traditional ingenue movie stars and setting the standard for one of Burton’s go-to character types for decades to come.

It’s not much of a hot take to say that the Penguin is as pitiable a villain as you’ll ever see in a Batman movie, at least in the way that Tim Burton and actor Danny DeVito bring him to life. You can’t help but feel a little sympathy for Oswald Cobblepot, considering how callously his own parents discarded him as a baby because of his physical deformities. But once he grows up, under the tutelage of a whole lot of penguins, the Penguin is as intense a bad guy as possible. (You can only feel so bad for someone who bites a chunk of someone’s face off in public.) The dexterity of DeVito’s performance is honestly impressive precisely because there’s so little room for mistakes. Go a little too far and make the Penguin an irretrievably gross bad guy, and lean back too much and you make him too empathetic (or simply pathetic) to be overtaken by Batman. DeVito never winks at the audience, never makes us laugh at his character simply because he’s small, and never lets up in his three-dimensional performance. In a film where he’s admittedly a bit overshadowed by another new character (we’ll talk about her soon), DeVito still stands out.

What can we say? He’s a rebel, Dottie. Yes, even though the 1985 film “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” seems a long way away considering what Tim Burton would do later on, his debut film does boast one of the best performances in his career. The late Paul Reubens had a bit of a boost here because he’d been playing the overgrown man-child Pee-wee Herman long before the film bearing his name. So unlike a lot of the other people on this list, he knew what worked and what didn’t for the character. But no matter: a great performance is a great performance, and this is undeniably hilarious work. Reubens was the kind of comedian who thrived on pushing the audience to the edge; it’s not wrong to feel like Pee-wee’s a bit annoying by design, but push it too far and you alienate the people watching what you’re doing. But Reubens knows exactly how far to push people as Pee-wee, making his work here something of a high-wire act, almost like dancing to “Tequila” in a biker bar just because you can’t help yourself. Even if the eponymous adventure isn’t that big, it’s the work of the leading man that makes it feel massive.

The movie is called “Batman,” but you would be forgiven for thinking that Tim Burton’s first foray into the world of superheroes is all about the Joker. That’s partly because when you cast a screen titan like Jack Nicholson to play criminal Jack Napier, you’re getting an actor who’s larger than life almost by design. Nicholson had already played the Devil in “The Witches of Eastwick” and Jack Torrance in “The Shining,” so while it’s fair to note that his role here isn’t automatically giving the audience much in the way of new or surprising, it’s still a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Even before Napier falls victim to some chemical waste and is transformed physically and mentally into Batman’s first true nemesis, Nicholson’s performance is big and ballsy. But once he dons the clown makeup, he takes the character to a whole new level of gleeful insanity. It’s a testament to Jack Nicholson as an actor that he’s able to play a character like the Joker — a case of impressive if predictable casting, because who else at the time could possibly play this guy? — and make him feel both terrifying and hilarious, a perfect blend of the type of character Tim Burton’s films benefit from. He’s not our number-one … guy, as Napier’s old boss said, but he’s still very good.

For all the actors with whom Tim Burton has worked, he’s only gotten one Oscar-winning performance and that was courtesy of Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi in Burton’s best overall film, “Ed Wood.” Though Landau’s Oscar win was seen as somewhat controversial at the time (he beat out Samuel L. Jackson for an admittedly legendary turn in “Pulp Fiction”), it’s hard to deny the pathos and humor he imbued in the famous screen icon Lugosi in the last years of his life. “Ed Wood” as an overall film is a tricky thing to pull off; it’s a biopic of a man known as the worst director of all time, responsible for films that few people hold up as genuinely, unironically entertaining. Still, it’s a successful love letter to the passion for art and creativity, even when it emanates from people whose talents are questionable at best. Lugosi, by the time of the events of the film, was far removed from playing Dracula in the Universal monster movie and was acting simply for the checks and to fuel his latent drug habit. But while these people could easily be sources of mockery, Burton and his cast, especially the intense Landau, treat the real-life figures with respect and three-dimensional reality. There’s a version of this performance, and this film as a whole, that would have been embarrassing marks on Lugosi’s checkered legacy, but Landau brought the legend to life again with depth and emotion.

It is perhaps a mark against the various “Batman” movies that the most memorable character is rarely the hero. So many talented actors have played Batman, but you often can’t help but think of the villains playing opposite him, from the late Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight” to the aforementioned Jack Nicholson to Colin Farrell in “The Batman.” (And Farrell’s the one getting a spinoff TV series.) In Tim Burton’s 1992 sequel “Batman Returns,” Bruce Wayne has a few different bad guys to deal with, although the most challenging foe is only somewhat of a foe to start: Selina Kyle, who eventually turns herself into the Catwoman thanks to a particularly nasty fall and the help of some neighborhood strays. Michelle Pfeiffer had already proven herself to be a captivating actress in films like “Scarface” and “The Fabulous Baker Boys,” but she locked in fully as Selina and made Catwoman such an iconic character associated specifically with her that while other talented performers like Halle Berry, Anne Hathaway, and Zoe Kravitz have tried, only Pfeiffer made Catwoman her own. Although the 1992 sequel was dinged by some critics and parents at the time for being too dark for the same younger audiences that flocked to the 1989 original, Pfeiffer makes Catwoman as haunting as she is alluring, and helps flesh out the character to be one of the most multi-dimensional people in Gotham City. Although some (including this writer) prefer the first “Batman” to its follow-up, there’s no better baddie in these films than Pfeiffer’s take on Catwoman.

There are two halves of Tim Burton’s id on display in the films he makes. On one hand, he’s got a wry and anarchist streak to him that we’ll get to in a minute. (You can probably guess what performance is going to take the top spot here.) But on the other hand, there’s a quiet, wistful, and bittersweet tone to so many of the leading men in his films or films connected to him. It could be someone like Jack Skellington, but Burton’s truest muse as a performer is Johnny Depp and his first time on screen with the director still stands out as a fantastic performance. As the title character in “Edward Scissorhands,” Depp has to walk an extremely fine line, playing someone who’s not quite mute but is often very childlike and unaware of the social mores of the modern world. The movie surrounding Depp runs the gamut from outrageous sex comedy (in the form of the housewives who find his ability to cut hedges and hair to be strangely arousing) to angsty teenage drama, along with flashbacks to when Edward was being raised (in a way) by the inventor who brought him to life with his not-always-helpful appendages. But Depp maintains an unwavering ability to hit the right tone with his performance, establishing a clear archetype within Tim Burton’s filmography of the likable loner, the awkward but relatable hero whose desires often run counter to the conflicts he has to resolve. Though “Edward Scissorhands” is not the film that made Depp a star (that would take another decade and change, with his role in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series), it established his big-screen bonafides and Burton’s distinctive style.

Could it be anyone else? That Michael Keaton tops this list isn’t just because he’s returning to such a seminal role in a long-awaited sequel. (And it should be noted that while Keaton is enjoyable in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” this list is specifically honoring his work in the original film.) It’s because even now, more than 35 years later, Keaton’s work is both extremely strange (befitting an extremely strange film) and immediately iconic. As you no doubt are aware, Beetlejuice as a character isn’t actually in a lot of the movie bearing his name. The Maitland couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) are our leading characters, traversing the world of the dead after a freak car accident snuffs out their lives before they decide to lean on the icky Beetlejuice to scare an obnoxious yuppie family out of their New England home. Keaton is going amazingly big in his performance, which is all the more amazing for the fact that it works so, so, so well. 

Beetlejuice is the guy you love to hate but can’t help but want to watch even in spite of his many misdeeds, and his fast-paced one-liners continue to be among the best gags in any modern comedy. Though many of Tim Burton’s films have a sadder streak to them, “Beetlejuice” is a movie guided by its title character, who destroys model towns, tries to ply his hand at marrying into a well-to-do household, can switch into a fancy speaking voice if it suits the situation, and happily gobbles a cockroach just to have a good snack. It’s worth noting that Keaton would use this role to springboard into playing Batman in Burton’s next film (with some controversy at the time), in part because it really is amazing to consider his vast range. Beetlejuice is many things … but he’s nothing like the Caped Crusader.