Most Memorable Movie and TV Vampires Through the Years

Fang-tastic. Like flared jeans and choker necklaces, vampires always come back in style eventually. It’s no surprise — especially when Hollywood keeps finding such great actors to play them.

Megan Thee Stallion revealed that she has a soft spot for vampire TV shows in July 2021, tweeting that she loved Nina Dobrev‘s character Elena Gilbert on The Vampire Diaries. The rapper was so attached to the vampire that she stopped watching when the actress left in the sixth season. (Dobrev returned two years later for the 2017 series finale.)

Though Ian Somerhalder‘s Damon was the Grammy winner’s favorite brother on the CW show, it’s actually a much more graphic supernatural drama that holds a special place in her heart: True Blood.

“I’ve watched every season like 10 times… might be my favorite show lol,” she told a fan who asked if she’d seen it.

True Blood introduced a plethora of iconic vampires, all of whom were played by actors who made them unforgettable. From Evan Rachel Wood‘s Queen Sophie-Anne Leclerq to Alexander Skarsgard‘s Eric Northman, the cast left an impact on fans before the series ended in 2014.

Leading lady Anna Paquin, who played the vampire-loving waitress Sookie Stackhouse, thought it was obvious what makes vampires so attractive. “They’re sexy and dangerous and always really hot. And they’ve been around a long time-they probably know what they’re doing,” Paquin told Interview just ahead of True Blood‘s 2008 premiere.

More than a decade later, the vampire trend was still going strong. In October 2021, Netflix’s Night Teeth star Lucy Fry had an even simpler answer as to why: escapism.

“People are attracted to that magic that’s a little bit outside of what our human experience can be,” Fry, who played bloodsuckers in both the 2021 Megan Fox film and 2014’s Vampire Academy, told Elite Daily at the time. “The gift of film and TV is to be able to take you into a world that’s slightly different.”

Not everyone sees it that way, though. The entire Twilight cast has offered plenty of hilariously shady commentary about the blockbuster franchise over the years, but the most biting remarks are usually from Robert Pattinson. The actor, who portrayed Edward Cullen, has made it clear that he cannot even begin to understand the appeal of loving someone with a thirst for blood.

“It’s a weird story, Twilight,” he told Jennifer Lopez during a November 2019 conversation for Variety’s Actors on Actors series. “It’s not just like — it’s strange how people responded a lot to it. I guess the books are very romantic, but at the same time, it’s not, like, ‘The Notebook’ romantic. ‘The Notebook’ is very sweet and heartbreaking, but Twilight is about this guy, and he finds the one girl he wants to be with, and he also wants to eat her. I mean, not eat her, but drink her blood or whatever. It’s not that other people are telling them they can’t be together, it’s his own body telling him that.”

Check out Pattinson and more celebs who have have donned fangs as vampires in movies and TV: