Misery

Misery was adapted into a film directed by Rob Reiner and made a significant contribution to the pop culture of the era, particularly for highlighting a female lead who differed so starkly from portrayals of women in film at the time. Released in 1990, the film blends psychological horror with suspense, delivering an intense portrayal of obsession and dependency. American actress Kathy Bates's Oscar-winning performance as Annie Wilkes, the obsessive fan who holds her favorite author, Paul Sheldon (played by James Caan), captive, has become iconic. Her character's unpredictability and the infamous "hobbling" scene have left an indelible mark on audiences and horror cinema.

Born in 1948, Bates was 42 and primarily a stage actress when she portrayed Annie Wilkes. She went onto become a major television and film actress and is still active as of 2024. Her iconic role as Annie explores the darker side of fandom and the sometimes-dangerous consequences of celebrity worship, a theme that resonates strongly in today's culture of instant access and social media. The film's tension-filled narrative and its exploration of power dynamics between fan and creator have greatly influenced the generation of psychological thrillers and horror films that followed.

One of the reasons Bates's portrayal of Annie became so iconic is because Annie Wilkes is the antithesis of everything a Hollywood heroine should be. Annie is middle-aged, of larger size, shy, not conventionally attractive, prudish, and yet intensely violent. In her character, King created an archetype that did not currently exist in American film. She was not a femme fatale like Alex Forrest, the antagonist from the psychological thriller Fatal Attraction (1987), a popular film at the time. Played by Glenn Glose, Alex is a powerful, slim, conventionally beautiful, executive bent on ruining her lover's marriage. Alex is obsessive, jealous, and displays rage like Annie, but Alex is hypersexualized, and her fixation on the protagonist (Dan, played by Michael Douglas) revolves around sex. Annie is plain-looking and markedly desexualized; she balks at any suggestion of sexuality. At the same time, she is powerful and controlling. In a 2016 interview, Bates discusses the difficulty of balancing strength and femininity in her roles:

You’re either young and glamorous and you’re going to get the lead and get the man at the end of the picture, or it’s the opposite: you’re a character actress, you’re not attractive enough for the other role, and so you’re playing the friend or the killer or the lesbian or the doctor or whatever. But the one who gets to play the young, pretty, gets-the-boy-at-the-end role doesn’t have any power. And vice versa: a character can have power, but not femininity (Michael Lassell, "New Again: Kathy Bates." Interview Magazine, 20 July 2016).

Bates's Annie gets around this dichotomy by bypassing mature female sexuality in favor of portraying a girlish innocence that makes her extreme violence all the more unsettling, as it completely contradicted the expectations audiences had about women.