Top 50 Animated Movie Cartoon Characters of All Time

Animated Cartoon Characters : The second golden age of animation is well under way, with Aardman, Miyazaki, Disney Pixar and DreamWorks rolling out rather good stories on a fairly regular basis. These movies maintain a family-friendly nature like classic Hallmark movies, then it is combined with awesome animated characters that kids love. But which characters of the stop-motion, CG or hand-drawn world really make the grade? Which existing characters made the leap from short form to full-length feature with their dignity intact? How do the newcomers really compare to old hands of earlier eras? Read on to find out. 

Best Animated Characters - Totoro - My Neighbour Totoro 

Cuddly, gentle and peace-loving, Totoro is a pure forest spirit who comes to the assistance of people in emotional need. He and his small friends also make kick-ass stuffed toys. Created by Japanese animation king Hayao Miyazaki, his gang resemble a cross between a rabbit and a Moomin, but have a quirky personality all of their own - they carry around bags of acorns (which they use to grow trees), use umbrellas and travel in a cat bus. That's right: a cat that is also a bus. But even amid such cuties, Totoro's round and cuddly self is still our favourite.

Best Animation Movie Character - Dory Finding Nemo

Animation's answer to Leonard Shelby, Dory is as sunny and good-natured as she is incapable of remembering your name for more than a few moments. Her short-term memory problems make for easy jokes within the context of the film, but as the story builds they acquire immense poignancy as she tries to overcome her limits and remember.

Best Animation Movie Character -Cruella de Vil - 101 Dalmatians

About as subtle as a Simon Cowell critique, the clue to the true nature of Dodie Smith's great villainess can be found in her name, like Dr. Evil, or Truly Scrumptious, or former Celtic defender Rafael Scheidt. In other words, beware a woman named de Vil, who smokes liberally, cackles malevolently at the drop of a hat, swans around in a car that has a King Kong-sized carbon footprint, and wants to make a fur coat out of the skins of gorgeous little Dalmatian puppies.

Best Animation Movie Character - Coraline

Neil Gaiman's dark-tinged children's tale combines perfectly with stop-motion genius Henry Selick's signature style, and Coraline herself pops off the screen even without the 3D glasses. She's a fully-realised kid, prone to annoying her parents and going off in a huff and being irritated by a neighbouring geek.

Best Animation Movie Character - Tetsuo - Akira

You know how motorcycle gang members are. Tetsuo's always been the odd man out, reliant on his friend Kaneda for support and protection. But when he is picked up by government scientists, and starts experiencing strange headaches, it becomes clear that Tetsuo may have more going on upstairs than anyone realised.

Best Animation Movie Character - Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story

The beauty of Buzz Lightyear is that, beneath the superficiality of the initial premise he's an utterly delusional toy who thinks he's a real Space Ranger there's real emotional depth and endless capacity for reinvention.

Best Animation Movie Character - Lilo and Stitch

Alien mayhem machine Stitch steals the show, of course, but in terms of character he isn't a patch on his human counterpart, the adorable Lilo. A recognisably flawed little girl, she's often moody and badly behaved, and has a creepy/cute fondness for things that are ugly or deformed.

Best Animation Movie Character - Puss In Boots in Shrek

The chief failing of the Shrek series is that the title character has always been a little bland, and always a lot overshadowed by the more colourful supporting cast. But who cares when, as in the case of Puss In Boots, they're this entertaining? A glorious reimagining of the swashbuckling charm of Zorro, transplanting his derring-do spirit and Latino swagger into the body of a cat just about higher than the boots he wears, Puss In Boots gave Shrek 2 a welcome shot in the arm just as Shrek and Donkey's banter was beginning to wear thin.

Dug - Best Animation Movie Character - Up

Many films have presented us with animals made human, but few have managed to give an animal speech but still keep their essential personality intact. Three cheers then for Dug, a recognisably doggy dog whose unfailing cheer and surprising complexity lift the second half of the film almost to the heights of that unforgettable opening.

Dumbo - Best Animation Movie Character

Oh, Dumbo. There aren't enough tear ducts or heartstrings in the world to absorb the emotional impact of the little elephant who thought and could, as it happens fly.

The Iron Giant - Best Animation Movie Character

f you're not quite sure why everyone's looking forward to Brad Bird's take on Mission: Impossible IV, check out this beautiful and moving adaptation of Ted Hughes' already-powerful children's book.

Maleficent - Best Animation Movie Character - Sleeping Beauty

ands down, no argument, the greatest animated villain ever. She's sexy, she's sensuous - in a Disney cartoon! - and she can TURN INTO A DRAGON. For added badassishness, she takes revenge on poor, defenceless infants in retaliation for perceived social snubs.

Jessica Rabbit - Movie: Who Framed Roger Rabbit

I'm not bad, drawls Jessica Rabbit, I'm just drawn that way. She can say that again. The loyal (as it turns out) wife of the incredibly annoying rabbit (seriously, what does she see in that guy, other than a way with a carrot?) is drawn many ways, all of them guilty as sin.

Marji - Movie: Persepolis

Arguably, Marji is a bit of a cheat, what with being based on a real-live human being - who, for bonus points, wrote the book and co-directed this film.

Wall-E

Proof, if proof were needed, that strong silent types are infinitely preferable to their chattier counterparts, Wall-E is an almost-mute waste-shifting robot who is easily the most adorable automaton ever created. With R2D2 genius Ben Burtt giving him a voice comprised chiefly of exclamations, hums and snippets of the Hello Dolly soundtrack. Combined with Pixar's genius for creating character with the twitch of an eye-shade, and you have someone who won audience hearts in about ten seconds flat, despite being rusty and rickety and probably smelling of trash. No mean feat for a guy who hangs out with a cockroach.

Baloo - The Jungle Book

Most bears will rip your face off as soon as look at you. You think Yogi hasn't racked up some collateral damage en route to ransacking those pic-a-nick baskets? But Baloo, aka the bear who takes Mowgli under his, erm, wing in The Jungle Book and shows him what's what and who's who, is the type to give bears a good name again after that unfortunate Grizzly Man business.

Best Animation Movie Characters (2)

Best Animation Movie Character - Woody Toy Story

How could we separate Woody and Buzz, you ask? Well, because Woody just edges his spacey BFF in the character stakes, springing fully-formed from the screen as a living, breathing, er, child's plaything. He always tries to do the right thing, but it's not always easy for him, and Pixar's genius lies in showing that even such a Dudley Do-Righter sometimes wishes he could take the easier road. Still, his intense loyalty to his friends, palpable humanity and the deeply emotional character arc he's given put Woody head and shoulders above the rest.

Mickey Mouse - Movie: Fantasia - Best Animation Movie Character

The most famous cartoon of all time, all the way down here? Why yes, because Mickey Mouse has never been a big character in feature-length animation, and his best performance was in a tiny segment of classical music oddity Fantasia. Here, he's the over-enthusiastic but under-disciplined assistant to a sorcerer, who tries to take a short-cut when his master is out of town and ends up with hundreds of magical mops flooding his home - and he's wonderful at it.

Z - Movie: Antz - Best Animated Characters

Who the hell casts Woody Allen in a kids' film, the debut film from the new DreamWorks at that? Bloody geniuses, that's who. While the film's been overshadowed by Pixar in the years since, Z himself is a distillation of every character Woody Allen ever played, a handy introduction to the director for kids. He's also really, really funny - the middle child of five million, barely able to lift ten times his own bodyweight. His performance makes this more than yer average, "boy-meets-girl, boy-likes-girl, boy-changes-the-underlying-social-order story".

Fiver- Movie: Watership Down - Best Animated Characters

How sweet and innocent is Fiver, the visionary rabbit hero of Watership Down? Well, he's voiced by Richard Briers, perhaps the nicest man in the history of Planet Earth. And that's pretty much all you need to know about a character who somehow manages to retain its innocence through the heartbreaking slog of Watership Down, through the savage dog attacks, environmental destruction and perilous journey, and somehow through Art Garfunkel's blinking Bright Eyes.

Daffy Duck - Movie: Who Framed Roger Rabbit - Best Animation Movie Character

Tricky one, this. Based largely on his movie career, you can't include Daffy Duck - arguably the greatest of all the Looney Tunes, with his scheming and his skiving and his suffering suckatash speech impediment - on this list. But you can't not include Daffy Duck on this list, and you shouldn't hold it against the character that Warner Bros. hasn't found a vehicle worthy of its greatest assets, from Daffy to Bugs to Elmer to Wile E.

Toad - Movie: Flushed Away - Best Animation Movie Character

Criminally underrated, and implicated as the main cause of Aardman's acrimonious split from DreamWorks, Flushed Away is actually an enormously fun film, that may not have the soul or finesse of a Wallace & Gromit flick, but which has a joke ratio that's up there with Zucker Abrahams Zucker.

Aisling - Movie: The Secret of Kells - Best Animated Characters

Generally speaking when countries are embodied in the form of people, they're big strong muscly men, or women who make up for in weaponry what they lack in coverage around the bosom region. Aisling represents the spirit of Ireland in this medieval adventure, but instead of being powerful or a bit slutty she's a tiny sprite, an impish younger sister who irritates Brendan as much as she helps him.

Thumper - Movie: Bambi - Best Animated Characters

The thing about Thumper is that he's so cute he almost helps you to forget that Bambi's mum has, um, [sob] died. The scene where the rabbit and the young faun venture out on the ice during their first winter, slipping and sliding around, remains one of the happiest things you'll ever see, guaranteed to raise a smile even if you've just eaten venison before watching the movie and are feeling horrendously guilty.

The second golden age of animation is well under way, with Aardman, Miyazaki, Disney Pixar and DreamWorks rolling out rather good stories on a fairly regular basis. But which characters of the stop-motion, CG or hand-drawn world really make the grade? Which existing characters made the leap from short form to full-length feature with their dignity intact? How do the newcomers really compare to old hands of earlier eras? Read on to find out.

Fievel - Movie: An American Tail - Best Animation Movie Character

so this guy makes it in not so much on the basis of being layered and complex as because of the fact that he's totally, totally adorable. He's tiny (even by mouse standards), he wears an oversized hat and he's searching for his family on the mean streets of old New York.

Sophie - Movie: Howl's Moving Castle - Best Animation Movie Character

Here's a perfect of marriage of director, author and heroine. Hayao Miyazaki always creates complex, believable heroines. Diana Wynne Jones always writes twisty-turny, slightly trippy plots. And Sophie herself offers loads of meat to play with, a young woman who mixes a no-nonsense approach to her eccentric wizard employer, Howl, with a crippling sense of her own inadequacy (which helps a witch turn Sophie into an old lady, as you do).

Remy - Movie: Ratatouille - Best Animation Movie Character

Brad Bird's Pixar efforts are rather more complex of moral than your average cartoon, willing to admit that not everyone is going to end up a princess or a superhero and that some people are just more talented than others. Remy, here, is a culinary genius, but it's not always easy for him to get ahead. After all, rats and kitchens do not match brilliantly from a hygiene point of view.

Rhino - Movie: Bolt - Best Animation Movie Character

The cutest little fanboy you'll ever see rolling around inside a Perspex ball, Rhino's a TV obsessed hamster who latches on to the film's doggy hero with unshakeable enthusiasm. He steals all the film's best lines and is, pretty much without exception, responsible for all its funniest moments.

Lumiere - Movie: Beauty and the Beast - Best Animation Movie Character

Perhaps the strangest thing about returning to this Oscar-nominated classic after all these years is learning that Jerry Orbach provided the voice of Lumiere, the irrepressibly Gallic, lover man, er, candlestick who plays such a big part in the story. Yes, him from Law & Order / Dirty Dancing (delete according to viewing preferences).

Satan - South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut - Best Animation Movie Character

Call him what you like - Lucifer, Shaitan, the Devil - but he's always scary and badass and in control. Unless, of course, you're Matt Stone and Trey Parker, in which case Satan may be physically well developed but he's rather more shy and retiring than we're used to - to the extent that his gay lover, Saddam Hussein, physically and emotionally abuses the poor fella.

Skipper the Penguin - Movie: Madagascar - Best Animation Movie Character

DreamWorks, between Madagascar and Shrek, developed a habit of creating supporting characters who steal the leads thunder. While you'd be hard pressed to remember the leads in this zoo adventure, the monkeys and penguins run away with the show - particularly the leader of the Dirty Dozen-style penguins, hijacking tankers like he was born in the Navy SEALs.

Insectosaurus - Monsters Vs. Aliens - Best Animation Movie Character

Other characters in this witty B-movie pastiche are wittier, chattier or have better hair (no, not you B.O.B.). But Insectosaurus is the one who really charms us, despite expressing himself chiefly in unintelligible roars (provided by director Conrad Vernon) and a fascination for bright, shiny lights. After all, he's just a little grub who's grown up - waaaay up - before his time, and while he will defend his friends and planet to the hilt, he seems a relatively peaceable sort at heart.

Roger Rabbit - Movie: Who Framed Roger Rabbit - Best Animation Movie Character

The concept of setting a Looney Tunes-type character in the real world is a bonkers but brilliant one, and this effort from the newly reinvigorated Disney of the late 1980s set them on course for a renaissance. And a lot of that is down to Roger himself - loud, brash, hugely irritating to partner Eddie Valiant but always well-intentioned.

Best Animation Movie Characters (34)

Emily - Corpse Bride - Best Animation Movie Character

This could easily have been an uncomplicated horror, with a young man ensnared by a terrifying deadite obsessed with wedding bells, a Bridezilla with bits falling off. Instead, it became an unusual love story, precisely because Helena Bonham-Carter's Emily is so adorable.

Best Animation Movie Characters (32)

Best Animation Movie Characters (31)

Grumpy - Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs - Best Animation Movie Character

When it comes to choosing one of the seven dwarves to go on this list, it really is throw a dart time. (Snow herself is a bit too bland to warrant serious consideration.) Dopey aside, Grumpy - long white beard, red nose, perpetually pissed off expression - has the best arc of the dwarves, initially reacting with hostility to the gorgeous princess dumped in their midst, before coming over all conciliatory and rushing to her aid.

Carl Fredricksen - Up - Best Animation Movie Character

Cranky, grumpy, irascible, cantankerous. Carl Fredericksen is all of these things and more, but the genius of Up's lead (the first of two characters from their arguable masterpiece to make this list) is that we know right from the off why he ended up that way. And it's not just because he's old. Watching Carl slowly shake off the shackles off loss and hurt over the course of 90-odd gloriously rejuvenating moments is a rare joy, the sort of thing that Pixar seems to specialise in.

Steve - Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs - Best Animation Movie Character

Possibly the most random character on this list, Steve is and there's no easy way of describing this a monkey. Nothing random about that, admittedly. But he's a monkey connected to a Speak & Spell machine that translates his thoughts into speech.

Chihiro - Spirited Away - Best Animation Movie Character

Miyazaki has a wealth of great characters, from bizarre gods to eccentric spirits and terrifying witches. But it's his heroines who are usually the best, and Spirited Away boasts the best of the lot. Over the course of her adventures Chihiro matures from a spoiled little brat into a mature and courageous young woman, helping others who are worse off than herself and eventually earning her own freedom and that of her (enchanted) parents.

Hiccup - How To Train Your Dragon - Best Animation Movie Character

Yes, we've gone for Hiccup rather than his adorable dragon Toothless? Why? Because he's a character we don't see enough of in animation: someone smart, competent and braver than he gives himself credit for.

Kristofferson - Fantastic Mr Fox - Best Animation Movie Character

One of the few non-star voice actors to appear in Wes Anderson's stop-motion adaptation of Roald Dahl's book, Eric Chase Anderson nevertheless got perhaps the most amusing character in a cast of eccentrics. He's a nephew of Mr Fox's, but his presence causes no end of grief for Fox's son Ash, who is thoroughly outshone by the polite, meditation-practicing, entirely self-sufficient cousin.

Captain - Hook Peter Pan - Best Animation Movie Character

Maybe it's because Captain Hook started out on stage that he's so darn good at getting us all cheering and yelling at the screen - for the other guy. A villain more adept at sneering you'd look hard to find, and as cold-blooded killers go it's hard to top him.

Mike - Wasowski Monsters Inc - Best Animation Movie Character

When it comes to Monsters, Inc., it's throw a dart time. You could go for Boo, arguably the cutest kid in movie history. Or Sulley, John Goodman's lovable walking rug of a monster. Or even Roz, the first evidence that Bob Petersen could do more than work behind the microphone.

Jack Skellington - The Nightmare Before Christmas - Best Animation Movie Character

Culture clashes have always been dramatic meat for filmmakers, but this is a more imaginative take on it than most. And Jack Skellington is at the heart of it, good-hearted but profoundly ignorant of what he's messing with.

Donkey - Shrek - Best Animation Movie Character

Anyone remember the last time they really cared about Shrek or Fiona in a Shrek movie? Nope? Us either. It's all about the supporting cast, who upstage the ostensible leads every single time the camera turns their way. Donkey - hyperactive, desperately insecure, unfailingly loyal - is one of the best of them. Eddie Murphy plays nerdier and sillier than his usual characters and, in profound contrast to his efforts in Norbit, it pays off in spades.

Genie - The Arabian Nights, dating from the 10th century - Best Animation Movie Character

Ever been annoyed by a celebrity voice coming out of a cartoon's mouth? If so, blame this guy, because Robin Williams' electric voice performance as the Genie in this Disney fairytale set something of a fashion for star casting in animation.

MadameSouza - Belleville Rendezvous - Best Animation Movie Character

She may be older than most of the characters here, but the grandmother in Belleville Rendezvous is the very definition of indefatigable. When her cyclist grandson is kidnapped by nefarious underworld biking fans, she pedals across oceans with only her faithful dog for company, enduring hardships without number to seek him out.