Carl Wilkes (father; deceased) Crysilda B. Wilkes (mother) Nancy Wilkes (mother; film canon) Paul E. Wilkes (brother) Evangeline Wilkes (half-sister, Castle Rock only)
Annie Wilkes is a character originating from Stephen King's 1987 novel Misery, in which she acts as one of the two central characters and main antagonist. In 2022, King picked her as his personal favorite character among all those he created in his literary career.
A nurse by training, Annie is a devoted fan of the works of romance author Paul Sheldon, whom she rescues after a car accident and brings back to her home. As she nurses him back to health, Sheldon gradually realizes how deranged Annie is, and becomes her unwilling captive. The character has become one of the stereotypes of the nurse as a torturer and angel of mercy.
The character has been portrayed in various audio, screen and stage adaptations of Misery, notably in a 1990 film adaptation in which she was portrayed by Kathy Bates, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. A heavily altered version of the character also acts as main protagonist of the second season of the television series Castle Rock (itself loosely based on various works of King) in 2019, in which she is primarily portrayed by Lizzy Caplan.
The novel provides Wilkes' backstory, stating that she was born in Bakersfield, California, on April 1, 1943, and graduated from the University of Southern California's nursing school with honors in 1966. After several years of working in hospitals across the country, she settled in a remote portion of Colorado's Western Slope.
In both the book and film, Wilkes rescues protagonist Paul Sheldon after he breaks both of his legs in a car accident, and takes him to her home to convalesce. She fawns over Sheldon, a writer of romance novels starring her favorite literary character, Misery Chastain; she professes to be his "number one fan" and says that she loves him. She also implies that she has visited the hotel where Sheldon finishes his novels as he was staying there. These statements, and the fact that she is not in a hurry to take him to a hospital, make Sheldon uneasy. He has studied psychological disorders as part of his research for the Misery series, and suspects early on that Wilkes is mentally unstable.
Wilkes is furious when she discovers Sheldon killed off Misery at the end of his latest novel. She tells him she has not called a hospital or told anybody about him and makes a veiled threat on his life. She holds him captive in her home and subjects him to a series of physical and psychological tortures. She also forces him to burn the only copy of a novel he felt would put him back on track as a mainstream author, and then makes him write a new novel bringing Misery back to life. Sheldon writes the book as Wilkes wants, but bridles at her treatment of him and manages to sneak out of his room several times while she is away.
On one of his trips out of his room, Sheldon finds Wilkes' old scrapbook and learns from the newspaper clippings inside that she is a serial killer whose spree dates back to her childhood in Bakersfield. Among her victims were a neighboring family, her own father, her college roommate, and a hitchhiker with whom she had a brief fling. Sheldon also learns that she killed several patients at other hospitals where she worked, but no one suspected foul play because the victims were either elderly or gravely injured. However, while serving as head maternity nurse at a hospital in Boulder, eleven infants in her care died under mysterious circumstances. She was tried for their deaths, but acquitted due to lack of evidence. Sheldon also finds that Wilkes was formerly married to a physical therapist named Ralph Dugan, who later divorced her, citing "mental cruelty". The last picture is an article about Sheldon's own disappearance, leading him to fear that he is Wilkes' next victim.
Sheldon does not know it, but Wilkes has known all along that he has been sneaking around her house. This sets off one of the film's most infamous scenes, in which she breaks his ankles with a sledgehammer to stop him from escaping. In the book, she chops off his foot with an axe and cauterizes it with a blowtorch and later cuts off one of his thumbs with an electric knife when he complains about a missing letter on his typewriter (neither of these things happen in the film).
In the book, Wilkes murders a Colorado state trooper who sees Sheldon in her house by stabbing him with a wooden cross and running him over with a lawnmower. In the film, the local sheriff comes to Wilkes' farm to investigate Sheldon's disappearance. Wilkes drugs Sheldon and hides him in her basement before subsequently killing the officer by shooting him in the back with a double-barreled shotgun when he hears Sheldon's cries for help.
Wilkes then says they should "celebrate" the new novel in a murder–suicide. Sheldon pretends to go along with it, telling her he needs a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne and a cigarette, as per his usual practice after finishing a book. He soaks the manuscript with lighter fluid he picked up in the basement and sets it ablaze. While Wilkes tries to put the fire out, Sheldon overpowers her by cracking her over the head with his typewriter and choking her. In the film, he chokes her with pages of the burnt novel. In the book, he chokes her with blank pages which she believes to be the book; the real novel is hidden from sight and was later published.
She ultimately dies of a fractured skull; Sheldon is then rescued by police. In the book, she fractures her skull when she slips and falls against the mantle of the guest room bed. When the police go in to search the bedroom where Wilkes is believed to have died, they find it empty. It is later revealed that, despite being mortally wounded, she managed to escape the bedroom and died in her barn with her hands on a chainsaw, which she presumably intended to use on Sheldon. In the movie, Sheldon trips her up so she falls and cracks her head on the corner of the typewriter she forced him to use; she recovers from this and attacks him, but he kills her by ramming a metal statue of her pet sow pig – named Misery after his stories – into her head.
Personality
King characterizes Annie Wilkes as a cunning, brutal and devious woman who hides her malice behind a cheery façade. Both the novel and the film portray her as extremely paranoid, and also suggest that she may have borderline personality disorder. In the novel, she has day-long bouts with depression, during which she is seen maiming herself; Sheldon also finds evidence that she gorges herself on vast quantities of food. She has an unhealthy obsession with romance novels, particularly Sheldon's Misery series.
She abhors profanity, to the point that she will fly into fits of rage if it is used in front of her. She instead expresses anger with childishly strange words and phrases like "cockadoodie", "mister man", "dirty bird", "dirty birdy", "oogy", "fiddely-foof" and "rooty-patooties". In the novel, however, she lets more conventional profanities slip on occasion. And in both the book and the film adaptation, she curses Sheldon as a "cocksucker" while threatening to kill him during the final fight scene.[1][2] She has violent tantrums over insignificant matters. For instance, when Sheldon complains that the packet of Eaton's Corrasable Bond paper she bought for him is smudge-prone, she smashes his still-healing knee; in the book, when he mentions that her typewriter is missing a key, she cuts off his thumb.
King has noted that Wilkes "may seem psychopathic to us, but it's important to remember that she seems perfectly sane and reasonable to herself – heroic, in fact, a beleaguered woman trying to survive in a hostile world filled with cockadoodie brats".[3]
In a special feature on the collectors' edition DVD, forensic psychologist Reid Meloy said that Wilkes' personality (as portrayed by Kathy Bates) is a virtual catalog of mental illness. According to Meloy, Wilkes has bipolar disorder, where someone can have manic psychoses as well as depressions. He also believes her profile is typical of people who stalk celebrities, although she more accurately depicts borderline personality disorder, often confused for bipolar disorder.[4]
In his commentary on the film available on the DVD, director Rob Reiner notes that Wilkes is loosely based on Genene Jones, a nurse who is believed to have killed as many as 50 children who were in her care over a two-year period.[4]
Annie Wilkes is mentioned in Kim Newman's novella, The Other Side of Midnight. In the novel, which is set in Newman's alternate history crossover Anno Dracula series, Wilkes is the murderer of John Lennon. When she is arrested for the crime, she tells the press that she loved Lennon, but that he had to die for splitting up the Beatles.
Kathy Bates reprised her role as Annie Wilkes in a 2008 commercial for DirecTV, with the setting being the infamous scene where she breaks Paul Sheldon's ankles.
The Tamil film Julie Ganapathi (2003), directed by Balu Mahendra,[5] is based loosely on the novel. South Indian actress Saritha plays the film's title character, who is based on the Annie Wilkes character.[6]
In the United Kingdom, the novel was also adapted into a play in 1992, starring Sharon Gless as Annie Wilkes,[8][9] and later into a 2005 play, starring Susan Penhaligon.[10]
There are also four Finnish play adaptations called Piina based on the 1990 film adaptation's screenplay by William Goldman. In the first of them, Annie Wilkes is played by Mari Turunen[11][12][13] in the second one, played by Henna Haverinen,[14][15] and in the third one, played by Mirva Tolppanen.[16][17] An upcoming fourth one, Annie Wilkes will be played by Satu Silvo.[18][19]
A version of a young Annie Wilkes appears in the TV series Castle Rock, and is portrayed by Lizzy Caplan.[20]
In the first series of RuPaul's Drag Race: UK Versus the World, contestant Baga Chipz portrayed Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes for the show’s signature Snatch Game celebrity impersonation challenge, for which she was named one of the two challenge winners.[21]
During an interview in April 2022, King selected Wilkes as his top pick character, just saying that "she [Wilkes] was fun".[23]
Related Research Articles
Dolores Claiborne is a 1992 psychological thriller novel by Stephen King. The novel is narrated by the title character. Atypically for a King novel, it has no chapters, double-spacing between paragraphs, or other section breaks; thus, the text is a single continuous narrative, which reads like the transcription of a spoken monologue. It was the best-selling novel of 1992 in the United States. The story introduced the fictional community of Little Tall Island, which Stephen King later used as the setting for the original TV mini-series Storm of the Century.
The Collector is a 1963 thriller novel by English author John Fowles, in his literary debut. Its plot follows a lonely young man who kidnaps a female art student in London and holds her captive in the cellar of his rural farmhouse. Divided in two sections, the novel contains both the perspective of the captor, Frederick, and that of Miranda, the captive. The portion of the novel told from Miranda's perspective is presented in epistolary form.
Desperation is a horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was published in 1996 at the same time as its "mirror" novel, The Regulators, itself published under King's Richard Bachman pseudonym. It was also made into a TV film starring Ron Perlman, Tom Skerritt and Steven Weber in 2006. The two novels represent parallel universes relative to one another, and most of the characters present in one novel's world also exist in the other novel's reality, albeit in different circumstances.
Katie Scarlett O'Hara is a fictional character and the protagonist in Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel Gone with the Wind and in the 1939 film of the same name, where she is portrayed by Vivien Leigh. She also is the main character in the 1970 musical Scarlett and the 1991 book Scarlett, a sequel to Gone with the Wind that was written by Alexandra Ripley and adapted for a television mini-series in 1994. During early drafts of the original novel, Mitchell referred to her heroine as "Pansy", and did not decide on the name "Scarlett" until just before the novel went to print. PBS has called O'Hara "quite possibly the most famous female character in American history..."
Misery is an American psychological horror thriller novel written by Stephen King and first published by Viking Press on June 8, 1987. The novel's narrative is based on the relationship of its two main characters – the romance novelist Paul Sheldon and his deranged self-proclaimed number one fan Annie Wilkes. When Paul is seriously injured following a car accident, former nurse Annie brings him to her home, where Paul receives treatment and doses of pain medication. Paul realizes that he is a prisoner and is forced to indulge his captor's whims.
Eaton's Corrasable Bond is a trademarked name for a brand of erasable typing paper. Erasable paper has a glazed or coated surface which is almost invisible, is easily removed by friction, and accepts typewriter ink fairly well. Removing the coating removes the ink on top of it, so mistakes can be easily erased once. After erasure, the paper itself is exposed, and further mistakes cannot be easily erased.
Kathleen Doyle Bates is an American actress. With a career spanning over five decades, she has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as nominations for a Tony Award and two BAFTA Awards.
Castle Rock is a fictional town appearing in Stephen King's fictional Maine topography, providing the setting for a number of his novels, novellas, and short stories. Castle Rock first appeared in King's 1979 novel The Dead Zone and has since been referred to or used as the primary setting in many other works by King.
Rose Madder is a horror/fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1995. It deals with the effects of domestic violence and, unusually for a King novel, relies for its fantastic element on Greek mythology. In his memoir, On Writing, King states that Rose Madder and Insomnia are "stiff, trying-too-hard novels."
An electric carving knife or electric knife is an electrical kitchen device used for slicing foods. The device consists of two serrated blades that are clipped together. When the appliance is switched on, the blades continuously move lengthways to provide the sawing action. They were popular in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.
Misery is a 1990 American psychological thriller film directed by Rob Reiner, based on Stephen King's 1987 novel of the same name, starring James Caan, Kathy Bates, Lauren Bacall, Richard Farnsworth, and Frances Sternhagen. The plot centers around an author who is held captive by an obsessive fan who forces him to rewrite the finale to his novel series.
Dolores Claiborne is a 1995 American psychological thriller drama film directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, and David Strathairn. The screenplay by Tony Gilroy is based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The plot focuses on the strained relationship between a mother and her daughter, largely told through flashbacks, after her daughter arrives to her remote hometown on a Maine island where her mother has been accused of murdering the elderly woman for whom she had long been a care-provider and companion.
Batwoman is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. She is the first DC character to bear the name "Batwoman". She was created by writer Edmond Hamilton and artist Sheldon Moldoff under the direction of editor Jack Schiff, as part of an ongoing effort to expand Batman's cast of supporting characters. Batwoman began appearing in DC Comics stories beginning with Detective Comics #233 (1956), in which she was introduced as a love interest for Batman in order to combat the allegations of Batman's homosexuality arising from the controversial book Seduction of the Innocent (1954). When Julius Schwartz became editor of the Batman-related comic in 1964, he removed non-essential characters including Kathy Kane, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, and Ace the Bat-Hound. Later, the 1985 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths retroactively established that Batwoman's existence was on an Earth separate from DC's main continuity.
Satu Irmeli Silvo is a Finnish actress and entrepreneur. In her artistic interpretations she has frequently portrayed the complicated role of an independent, emancipated woman, whose values and lifestyle are contradictory to the so-called traditional woman's role.
The following is a comprehensive list of the acting and directing credits of American actress Kathy Bates. With over 200 acting and directing credits to her name, Bates is perhaps best known for her breakout role in the 1990 horror film Misery, based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King. Her role as Annie Wilkes was met with much praise, earning her the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama the following year. Since then she has acted in numerous other films, in both comedy and drama categories, earning three additional Academy Award nominations as well as seven further Golden Globe Award nominations.
Mari Turunen is a Finnish actress. She has become known for the Kummeli comedy series from 1994 to 2000, and films Kummeli: Kultakuume from 1997 and Kummelin Jackpot from 2006. She also starred in the 2021 crime drama television series Lakeside Murders (Koskinen).
Winnifred "Wendy" Torrance is a fictional character and protagonist of the 1977 horror novel The Shining by the American writer Stephen King. She also appears in the prologue of Doctor Sleep, a 2013 sequel to The Shining.
Misery is a play written by Simon Moore. It is based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Stephen King, which was adapted into a 1990 film, the script for which was written by William Goldman, who wrote some of the productions.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
