The 10 Best Bill Skarsgård Movies And TV Shows, Ranked

Bill Skarsgård has built an international reputation that rivals just about any member of his illustrious family of actors. The Swedish superstar keeps himself busy with an array of roles in different projects, many of which have resonated with audiences enough to take him to the brink of becoming a household name.

Skarsgård doesn't seem to shy away from any genre, and while his roles often come with a twist, he's proven time and time again that he can play just about any kind of character. For fans who are looking for a sampler platter of the actor's finest work, here's a collection of Bill Skarsgård's best movies and TV shows.  

One of the first Netflix original series, "Hemlock Grove" is also the first time international horror fans got a glimpse of Bill Skarsgård's talents. He plays Roman Godfrey, the wealthy scion of the Godfrey family that holds a lot of sway in the monster-infested town of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania. He's also part of the Ukrainian community of vampires known as Upir, which makes him one of said monsters.

"Hemlock Grove" has its charms, but is unlikely to go down in history as an all-time great. However, the three-season show is worth including on this list for Skarsgård's nuanced portrayal of a sneering upper-class vampire who's nevertheless not without his charms. 

2018's "Assassination Nation" sees Bill Skarsgård in a town that falls apart after a mystery hacker leaks secret information about its residents. This creates a chain of events that sends the area into a murderous, "Purge"-style disarray. Skarsgård plays protagonist Lily's (Odessa Young) boyfriend Mark, whose anger over some of the hacker revelations plays a part in the town's downfall. "Assassination Nation" is a loud and nasty movie, but it's also a pretty good one — and a great opportunity to see Skarsgård in a vaguely recognizable "who's that guy?" capacity before he burst into the next level of fame. 

AMC's "Soulmates" revolves around technology that can supposedly find true love, with every episode telling the story about a different couple. Season 1, Episode 4, "Layover," stars Bill Skarsgård as Mateo, who's on his way to meet his destined partner in Colombia. But during a layover stop in Mexico, he has a one-night stand with con man Jonah (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), who promptly steals his passport and money. 

What follows is a long and surprisingly amusing buddy quest to relocate Mateo's lost property, and the show's first real clue that the matchmaking technology might not be all that it's cracked up to be. In an international career that's increasingly gravitating toward bombastic antagonists and tragic protagonists, the out-of-his-depth Mateo is an excellent opportunity to see Skarsgård play a far more mundane but no less entertaining character. 

"Villains" features Bill Skarsgård as a bad guy. This is no surprise. It's just that this time, he's up against even worse people. Skarsgård's Mickey and Maika Monroe's Jules are young criminals who decide to break into a house, only to find out that they've stumbled into the domicile of George (Jeffrey Donovan) and Gloria (Kyra Sedgwick), two individuals who are far stranger and more dangerous than they bargained for. 

Apart from the fact that "Villains" is a pretty great horror comedy, Skarsgård fans might want to check it out for its sheer nesting doll qualities. After all, how often can you see the actor play a villain who encounters a pair of even bigger villains and is unwittingly thrust into a protagonist role? 

Bill Skarsgård's short tenure as the acid-spitting Zeitgeist in "Deadpool 2's" doomed X-Force team doesn't give him a lot to do, but it's plain to see that he understands the assignment. From the deadpan clearing of the throat when he offers to demonstrate his powers to his wood chipper death scene, Skarsgård fully commits to improving the movie with what little screen time he gets. As a bonus, he now gets to say that he was in a superhero team with Ryan Reynolds, Zazie Beetz, Terry Crews, Lewis Tan, Rob Delaney, and (very, very technically) Brad Pitt. Not everyone can put that one in their resume. 

Hulu's lauded psychological horror series "Castle Rock" is based on various aspects of the mythology Stephen King created around the titular fictional Maine town, so there's a lot of weird people running around. So it's saying something that Bill Skarsgård plays the strangest, most dangerous character of them all.  

The Kid looks like a regular, nice guy and may even be one in certain circumstances. However, he's actually an ageless, apparently immortal being, and strange and horrible things happen wherever he goes. Though very different from Skarsgård's other King-adjacent role in "It," The Kid was similarly custom created for Skarsgård's particular blend of normalcy and utter otherworldliness.

Edson Orda's 2020 ensemble movie "Nine Days" is a critically lauded fantasy drama that takes place in a plane of pre-existence, where Will (Winston Duke) decides which unborn souls get to enter true existence. Bill Skarsgård's thoughtful Kane is one of the several souls under review, and one of the most distinguished candidates in the selection process. The role gives Skarsgård the opportunity to flex his dramatic muscles in a cast full of actors like Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong, and Tony Hale, which makes the film a great watch for fans who are only familiar with his horror fare.

By 2022, Bill Skarsgård was such a well-known genre presence that whenever he turned up in a horror movie, the knee-jerk reaction was to expect him to be the villain. The surprising and delightful "Barbarian" took this expectation and ran with it when it cast him as Keith, a seemingly normal yet slightly off guy who's already staying in the AirBnB Tess (Georgina Campbell) has rented. Keith is presented as a very likely antagonist for roughly half of the movie, and Skarsgård plays him as just suspicious enough to keep the audience and Tess on their toes. As such, it's a major shock when the true horrors of the movie reveal themselves and promptly kill poor Keith — and it's hard not to admire "Barbarian's" sheer ingenuinity for casting the Swede in the role, knowing how it would wrong-foot the audience.

After an entire series of movies where he mows down every single threat, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) finally meets his match in "John Wick: Chapter 4" in Bill Skarsgård's Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont. A smarmy non-combatant with nigh-infinite resources behind him, the Marquis deals with John by simply destroying everything around him and forcing him in an unwinnable situation. He's the perfect villain for the best "John Wick" movie in the series, and the fact that Skarsgård was chosen for the role speaks volumes of his status as a portrayer of game-breakingly powerful antagonists. Seeing as Skarsgård crafted the Marquis' villainous traits himself, the choice was extremely apt. 

Tim Curry's take on Pennywise sat on the top of the creepy clown pile for so long that it was hard to see how the relatively unknown Skarsgård could rise to the challenge. His very first scene with little Georgie Denborough (Jackson Robert Scott) in 2017's "It" immediately proved the doubters wrong. Skarsgård's Pennywise is so utterly alien that he had to do most of his own stunts for "It" simply because no one else could move like him, to the point where he could physically perform the character's lazy eye tic without any added effects. 

As far as perfect casting decisions go, Skarsgård as Pennywise is right up there with Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark. While it's up for debate whether either "It" chapter ranks among his best films, the first one in particular is the definitive Bill Skarsgård movie and a must-watch for any of his fans — as long as they don't mind the nightmares.