The Top 5 Actors to Ever Play Dracula

Do vampires ever go out of style? The age of The Vampire Diaries, Twilight, and True Blood was supposed to represent to peak of our pop culture obsession with the bloodthirsty undead, but since then we’ve had What We Do in the Shadows, Midnight Mass, a new BBC take on Dracula in 2020, and now, Renfield. The movie premiered on April 14, with producers betting that American viewers are drawn to vampire stories well outside the Halloween season. Though Renfield centers around the eponymous servant of Dracula, played by Nicholas Hoult, we’ll wager that a good number of those who come to see it are motivated by the fact that the Count himself will be played by none other than Nic Cage.

Of course, Cage is just one of many actors who’ve taken on the role that has been synonymous with vampires since novelist Bram Stoker penned Dracula in 1897. Whether he went by Dracula, Vlad, or Nosferatu, the undead Transylvanian nobleman has been starring in movies since the film industry’s earliest days. So whose shoes will be hardest for Cage to fill? We’re looking at our list of The Best Actors Who Played Dracula (9K votes) to see who made the character their own in the minds of everyday film fans as America prepares to meet Dracula once more.

#1: Christopher Lee (Dracula, 1958)

Some of the late Christopher Lee’s greatest roles were in cheap, mid-century horror movies like Dracula. At 6’5, Lee’s towering made him a natural fit for monster roles, and he used it to great effect in seven Dracula movies. But more memorable than his appearance in these movies was what he said — or rather, what he didn’t say. Lee’s Dracula had very little screen time across these movies, and in the original 1958 film, his character says nothing after his identity is discovered, lending him a creepy quality that sets his Count apart.

Those who love Lee are 2X more likely to also enjoy Cage, a stronger affinity than any other actor in this Top 5 has with the Leaving Las Vegas actor. That’s great news for Renfield’s producers, since Lee is the most popular actor on this list being voted on by Dracula fans.

#2: Bela Lugosi (Dracula, 1931)

When you think about the character Dracula saying “I vant to suck your blood!,” the person you’re imagining probably looks and sounds a lot more like Bela Lugosi’s Dracula than that of any other actor on this list — though, it should be noted, he never said that line in the 1931 movie. Lugosi’s Dracula had an aristocratic air, his razor-sharp widow’s peak, and a trademark cape. This all made for a more human-looking, but still frightening version of the famous vampire than the one made famous by Max Schreck less than a decade earlier.

Neither fans of Lugosi, nor of his film Dracula have a strong affinity with Nic Cage. That said, those who voted up Dracula on our list of The Best Movies Of All Time (7 million votes) were 5X more likely to also vote up Adaptation, a film in which Cage stars. Good to know that these classic horror fans won’t be turning up their nose at the idea of Cage taking on the great Lugosi’s most famous role.

#3: Gary Oldman (Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1992)

Gary Oldman says his motivation to take the lead role in Bram Stoker’s Dracula didn’t have anything to do with a special affection for the character of Dracula, claiming it was never a “bucket list” role for him. The British actor was moved by the opportunity to work with famed director Francis Ford Coppola, who had a more special affection for the story. Together, Coppola, screenwriter James V. Hart, and Oldman created a very different Dracula from the standard set by Lugosi and Lee. Oldman’s bloodsucker was a mass of prosthetic wrinkles in elaborate red silk robes, a deliberate design choice that would distinguish Coppola’s Dracula from the dozens of Hollywood treatments before it.

Despite being contemporaries who are both famous for their dedication to their roles — and despite both of them being considered to play the respective leads in Dumb and Dumber — fans of Gary Oldman don’t have a particularly strong affinity for Nic Cage. Oldman is held in higher esteem as an actor by most of Ranker’s voters, who put Oldman at #10 on our list of The Best (Male) Actors Working Today (2 million votes) and Cage down at #122. One thing about this list that would surely have surprised people in 1992 is that Oldman’s Dracula costar Keanu Reeves is one spot above him at #9. At the time of its release, much of the criticism of the movie was focused on Reeves’ performance, and in particular, his less than natural sounding British accent.

#4: Max Shreck (Nosferatu, 1922)

Nosferatu is a classic silent German film that is now part of the public domain, but it started as an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula — one that was successfully sued by Bram Stoker’s estate. Despite the fact that the names of characters, the setting, and several other key details were altered to distance the movie from the novel, which had been published just 25 years earlier, a judge ordered that all copies of Nosferatu be destroyed. Only one copy survived in the United States, where Dracula was already part of the public domain. Thanks to this copy, Nosferatu would become an extremely influential horror movie, thanks in large part to Max Shreck’s iconic performance as Count Orlok.

Shreck has no affinity with Nic Cage or his films. On The Best Actors Who Played Dracula, those who vote up Shreck are 8X more likely to pick Klaus Kinski, who starred in Wener Herzog’s 1979 remake Nosferatu the Vampyre. Their second favorite pick beyond Shreck himself is Willem Dafoe, who played Shreck in 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire, a fictional retelling of the making of Nosferatu. It seems that fans of Nosferatu see the film as being separate from Dracula more than the heirs of Bram Stoker did.

#5: Luke Evans (Dracula Untold, 2014)

Eclipsing renowned actors like Willem Dafoe and Frank Langella, Luke Evans’ performance in Dracula Untold rounds out the Top 5. The entry is a tad surprising, given that Dracula Untold was a box office flop that got mostly negative reviews from critics. Still, this origin story of Vlad the Impaler is more sympathetic to the vampire than any of the other films featured here, which could have won over voters to both Evans and the character.

There’s no statistical correlation between a taste for Evans and one for Cage, but as far as other actors who’ve played Dracula, those who voted up Evans on our list are 7X more likely to have also voted up Gerard Butler, who played the Count in Dracula 2000. They’re also 6X more likely to vote up Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, the star of NBC’s 2013 series Dracula. One could extrapolate from this that those who loved Evans’ performance are millennials who have a soft spot for takes on the character that aired during the last twenty years over the classics of the 20th century.

These stories are crafted using Ranker Insights, which takes over one billion votes cast on Ranker.com and converts them into actionable psychographics about pop culture fans across the world. To learn more about how our Ranker Insights can be customized to serve your business needs, visit insights.ranker.com, or email us at insights@ranker.com.

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