AFI lists greatest heroes, villains

Indiana Jones? James Bond? Rocky Balboa? They all took a back seat to Atticus Finch in the American Film Institute’s polling for greatest movie hero of all time.

Finch is the bigotry-battling attorney and single father played by Gregory Peck to Academy Award-winning perfection in the classic 1962 film “To Kill a Mockingbird,” based on the novel by Harper Lee.

His selection was announced Tuesday night on “AFI’s 100 Years ... 100 Heroes & Villains,” a TV special on CBS. Along with Jones, Bond and Balboa, other top-10 heroes were Rick Blaine in “Casablanca,” Will Kane in “High Noon,” Clarice Starling in “Silence of the Lambs,” Ellen Ripley in “Aliens,” George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and T.E. Lawrence in “Lawrence of Arabia.”

“Silence of the Lambs” also produced AFI’s No. 1 villain: Hannibal Lecter. He was followed by Norman Bates (“Psycho”), Darth Vader (“The Empire Strikes Back”), the Wicked Witch of the West (“The Wizard of Oz”), Nurse Ratched (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”), Mr. Potter (“It’s a Wonderful Life”), Alex Forrest (“Fatal Attraction”), Phyllis Dietrichson (“Double Indemnity”), Regan MacNeil (“The Exorcist”) and the queen from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”