Annie Wilkes
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Annie Wilkes is the main
antagonist An antagonist is a character in a story who is presented as the chief foe of the protagonist. Etymology The English word antagonist comes from the Greek ἀνταγωνιστής – ''antagonistēs'', "opponent, competitor, villain, enemy, riv ...
in the 1987 novel '' Misery'', by
Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, crime, science-fiction, and fantasy novels. Described as the "King of Horror", a play on his surname and a reference to his high s ...
. In the 1990 film adaptation of the novel, Wilkes was portrayed by
Kathy Bates Kathleen Doyle Bates (born June 28, 1948) is an American actor and director. Known for her roles in comedic and dramatic films and television programs, she has received various accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, includ ...
, who won the
Academy Award for Best Actress The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance in a leading role in a film released that year. ...
for her portrayal. A nurse by training, she has become one of the
stereotypes In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...
of the nurse as a torturer and angel of mercy.


Character background

The novel provides Wilkes' backstory, stating that she was born in
Bakersfield Bakersfield is a city in Kern County, California, United States. It is the county seat and largest city of Kern County. The city covers about near the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley and the Central Valley region. Bakersfield's populat ...
,
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, on April 1, 1943, and graduated from the
University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...
's nursing school with honors in 1966. After several years of working in hospitals across the country, she settled in a remote portion of
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
's Western Slope. In both the book and film, Wilkes rescues protagonist Paul Sheldon after he breaks both of his legs in a car accident, and takes him to her home to convalesce. She fawns over Sheldon, a writer of romance novels starring her favorite literary character, Misery Chastain; she professes to be his "number one fan" and says that she loves him. She also implies that she has visited the hotel where Sheldon finishes his novels as he was staying there. These statements, and the fact that she is not in a hurry to take him to a hospital, make Sheldon uneasy. He has studied psychological disorders as part of his research for the ''Misery'' series, and suspects early on that Wilkes is mentally unstable. Wilkes is furious when she discovers Sheldon killed off Misery at the end of his latest novel. She tells him she has not called a hospital or told anybody about him and makes a veiled threat on his life. She holds him captive in her home and subjects him to a series of physical and psychological tortures. She also forces him to burn the only copy of a novel he felt would put him back on track as a mainstream author, and then makes him write a new novel bringing Misery back to life. Sheldon writes the book as Wilkes wants, but bridles at her treatment of him and manages to sneak out of his room several times while she's away. On one of his trips out of his room, Sheldon finds Wilkes' old scrapbook and learns from the newspaper clippings inside that she is a
serial killer A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A * * * * with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...
whose spree dates back to her childhood in Bakersfield. Among her victims were a neighboring family, her own father, her college roommate, and a hitchhiker with whom she had a brief fling. Sheldon also learns that she killed several patients at other hospitals where she worked, but no one suspected foul play because the victims were either elderly or gravely injured. However, while serving as head maternity nurse at a hospital in
Boulder In geology, a boulder (or rarely bowlder) is a rock fragment with size greater than in diameter. Smaller pieces are called cobbles and pebbles. While a boulder may be small enough to move or roll manually, others are extremely massive. In c ...
, eleven infants in her care died under mysterious circumstances. She was tried for their deaths, but acquitted due to lack of evidence. Sheldon also finds that Wilkes was formerly married to a physical therapist named Ralph Dugan, who later divorced her, citing "mental cruelty". The last picture is an article about Sheldon's own disappearance, leading him to fear that he is Wilkes' next victim. Sheldon doesn't know it, but Wilkes has known all along that he has been sneaking around her house. This sets off one of the film's most infamous scenes, in which she breaks his ankles with a sledgehammer to stop him from escaping. In the book, she chops off his foot with an axe and cauterizes it with a blowtorch and later cuts off one of his thumbs with an electric knife when he complains about a missing letter on his typewriter (neither of these things happen in the film). In the book, Wilkes brutally murders a Colorado state trooper who sees Sheldon in her house by stabbing him with a wooden cross and running him over with a lawnmower. In the film, the local sheriff comes to Wilkes' farm to investigate Sheldon's disappearance. Wilkes drugs Sheldon and hides him in her basement before subsequently killing the officer by shooting him in the back with a double-barreled shotgun when he hears Sheldon's cries for help. Wilkes then says they should "celebrate" the new novel in a
murder–suicide A murder-suicide is an act in which an individual murder, kills one or more persons either before or while suicide, killing themselves. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms: * Murder linked with suicide of a person with a ...
. Sheldon pretends to go along with it, telling her he needs a bottle of
Dom Pérignon Dom Pérignon (; ) is a brand of vintage Champagne. It is named after Dom Pérignon, a Benedictine monk who was an important quality pioneer for Champagne wine but who, contrary to popular myths, did not discover the Champagne method for making ...
champagne and a cigarette, as per his usual practice after finishing a book. He soaks the manuscript with lighter fluid he picked up in the basement and sets it ablaze. While Wilkes tries to put the fire out, Sheldon overpowers her by cracking her over the head with his typewriter and choking her. In the film, he chokes her with pages of the burnt novel. In the book, he chokes her with blank pages which she believes to be the book; the real novel is hidden from sight and was later published. She ultimately dies of a fractured skull; Sheldon is then rescued by police. In the book, she fractures her skull when she slips and falls against the mantle of the guest room bed. When the police go in to search the bedroom where Wilkes is believed to have died, they find it empty. It is later revealed that, despite being mortally wounded, she managed to escape the bedroom and died in her barn with her hands on a chainsaw, which she presumably intended to use on Sheldon. In the movie, Sheldon trips her up so she falls and cracks her head on the corner of the typewriter she forced him to use; she recovers from this and attacks him, but he kills her by ramming a metal statue of her pet sow pig – named Misery after his stories – into her head.


Personality

King characterizes Annie Wilkes as a cunning, brutal and devious woman who hides her malice behind a cheery façade. Both the novel and the film portray her as extremely
paranoid Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy c ...
, and also suggest that she may have
borderline personality disorder Borderline personality disorder (BPD), also known as emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD), is a personality disorder characterized by a long-term pattern of unstable interpersonal relationships, distorted sense of self, and strong ...
. In the novel, she has day-long bouts with depression, during which she is seen maiming herself; Sheldon also finds evidence that she gorges herself on vast quantities of food. She has an unhealthy obsession with
romance novel A romance novel or romantic novel generally refers to a type of genre fiction novel which places its primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and usually has an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Pre ...
s, particularly Sheldon's ''Misery'' series. She abhors profanity, to the point that she will fly into fits of rage if it is used in front of her. She instead expresses anger with childishly strange words and phrases like "cockadoodie", "mister man", "dirty bird", "dirty birdy", "oogie", "fiddely-foof" and "rooty-patooties". In the novel, however, she lets more conventional profanities slip on occasion. And in both the book and the film adaptation, she refers to Sheldon as a "cocksucker" while promising to kill him during the final fight scene. She has violent tantrums over insignificant matters. For instance, when Sheldon complains that the packet of Eaton's Corrasable Bond paper she bought for him is smudge-prone, she smashes his still-healing knee; in the book, when he mentions that her typewriter is missing a key, she cuts off his thumb. King has noted that Wilkes "may seem
psychopathic Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits. Different conceptions of psychopathy have been ...
to us, but it's important to remember that she seems perfectly sane and reasonable to herself – heroic, in fact, a beleaguered woman trying to survive in a hostile world filled with cockadoodie brats". In a special feature on the collectors' edition DVD,
forensic psychologist Forensic psychology is the development and application of scientific knowledge and methods to help answer legal questions arising in criminal, civil, contractual, or other judicial proceedings. Forensic psychology includes both research on various ...
Reid Meloy said that Wilkes' personality (as portrayed by Kathy Bates) is a virtual catalog of
mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
. According to Meloy, Wilkes has bipolar disorder, where someone can have manic psychoses as well as depressions. He also believes her profile is typical of people who stalk celebrities, although she more accurately depicts borderline personality disorder, often confused for bipolar disorder. In his commentary on the film available on the DVD, director
Rob Reiner Robert Norman Reiner (born March 6, 1947) is an American actor and filmmaker. As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence with the role of Michael "Meathead" Stivic on the CBS sitcom ''All in the Family'' (1971–1979), a performanc ...
notes that Wilkes is loosely based on that of
Genene Jones Genene Anne Jones (born July 13, 1950) is an American serial killer, responsible for the deaths of up to 60 infants and children in her care as a licensed vocational nurse during the 1970s and 1980s. In 1984, Jones was convicted of murder and ...
, a nurse who is believed to have killed as many as 50 children who were in her care over a two-year period.


Other appearances

The fictional version of King that appears in '' The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower'' (2004) discusses Annie Wilkes. Annie Wilkes is mentioned in
Kim Newman Kim James Newman (born 31 July 1959) is an English journalist, film critic and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's ''Dracula (1931 ...
's novella, ''The Other Side of Midnight''. In the novel, which is set in Newman's
alternate history Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, altern ...
crossover ''Anno Dracula'' series, Wilkes is the murderer of
John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
. When she is arrested for the crime, she tells the press that she loved Lennon, but that he had to die for splitting up
the Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...
. Kathy Bates reprises her role as Annie Wilkes in a 2008 commercial for
DirecTV DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary service is a digital satellite service serving the United States. It ...
, with the setting being the infamous scene where she breaks Paul Sheldon's ankles. The
Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...
film ''
Julie Ganapathi ''Julie Ganapathi'' is a 2003 Indian Tamil-language psychological thriller film written, photographed, edited and directed by Balu Mahendra, starring Saritha, Jayaram and Ramya Krishnan. It is based on the 1987 Stephen King novel '' Misery''. ...
'' (2003), directed by
Balu Mahendra Balanathan Benjamin Mahendran (19 May 1939 13 February 2014), commonly known as Balu Mahendra, was a Sri Lankan-born Indian cinematographer, director, screenwriter and film editor who worked predominantly in Tamil cinema. Widely regarded as ...
, is based loosely on the novel. South Indian actress
Saritha Saritha is an Indian actress who has acted in more than 500 films in Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu languages. She was one of the popular and critically acclaimed lead actresses during the 1980s. She also appeared in a television serial, ' ...
plays the film's title character, who is based on the Annie Wilkes character. The novel was later adapted into a play, which ran on
Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...
from November 2015 to February 2016. Annie was played by
Laurie Metcalf Laura Elizabeth Metcalf (born June 16, 1955) is an American actress. Often described as a character actor, she's known for her complex and versitile roles across the stage and screen. She has received various accolades throughout her career sp ...
. At the 70th Annual Tony Awards, Metcalf was nominated for Best Actress in a Play for her performance. There are also two Finnish play adaptations called ''Piina'' based on the 1990 film adaptation's screenplay by William Goldman. In one of them, Annie Wilkes is played by
Mari Turunen Mari Turunen (born 1970 in Joensuu) is a Finnish actress. She has become known for the Kummeli comedy series from 1994 to 2000, and films '' Kummeli: Kultakuume'' from 1997 and ''Kummelin Jackpot'' from 2006. She also starred in the 2021 crime dr ...
and in another, by Henna Haverinen. A version of a young Annie Wilkes appears in the TV series '' Castle Rock'', and is portrayed by
Lizzy Caplan Elizabeth Anne Caplan (born June 30, 1982) is an American actress. Her first acting role was on the television series ''Freaks and Geeks'' (1999–2000). She received wider recognition with roles in the films ''Mean Girls'' (2004) and ''Cloverfi ...
. In the first series of '' RuPaul's Drag Race: UK Versus the World'', contestant
Baga Chipz Leo Loren, better known by the stage name Baga Chipz, is an English drag queen known for competing on the first series of ''RuPaul's Drag Race UK'' (2019) and later the first season of '' RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs the World'' (2022). Baga Chipz ...
portrayed Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes for the show’s signature
Snatch Game Snatch Game is a challenge on the ''Drag Race'' reality competition television franchise. Beginning with the second season of the original American series ''RuPaul's Drag Race'', the challenge has taken place on every season since. It has also o ...
celebrity impersonation challenge, for which she was named one of the two challenge winners. A line from the 1990 adaptation, wherein Wilkes claims that she is Sheldon's "Number One Fan" is
sampled Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of so ...
in the 2022 song "You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween" by English rock band
Muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...
.


Reception

The
American Film Institute The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees. Leade ...
included Wilkes (as played by Bates) in their "100 Heroes and Villains" list, ranking her as the 17th most iconic villain (and sixth most iconic villainess) in film history. During an interview in April 2022, King selected Wilkes as his top pick character, just saying that "she ilkeswas fun".


References


External links

*
American Film Institute
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilkes, Annie Castle Rock (franchise) Characters in American novels of the 20th century Female horror film villains Female literary villains Female villains Fictional characters from California Fictional characters from Colorado Fictional characters with bipolar disorder Fictional characters with borderline personality disorder Fictional characters with psychiatric disorders Fictional characters with schizoid personality disorder Fictional murderers of children Fictional hermits Fictional kidnappers Fictional female murderers Fictional nurses Fictional patricides Fictional serial killers Fictional stalkers Fictional torturers Literary characters introduced in 1987 Stephen King characters Fictional bibliophiles