The top 10 worst movie stepmothers

"Stepmother" has become a byword for twisted, malicious maternal femininity, yet even the worst versions enshired on film are deliciously rotten, vamping around with smoky eyes and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Following the success of our Top 10 Worst Movie Mothers, we round up the Top 10 Worst Movie Stepmothers (and Almost-Stepmothers).

1. Snow White
Ordering a flunky to kill your stepdaughter is bad enough. But personally trying to poison your husband's child with laced apples is pretty much as bad as it gets. That's why Snow White's wicked stepmother takes our top spot. The mother of evil stepmothers. The queen demands Snow White's heart, gift wrapped.

2. Cinderella
The tagline to this story could be, “My stepmother inherited my dad’s fortune and all I got was this pair of Marigolds.” Walt Disney’s original animated movie is a classic and the story has been retold in countless versions, including an Oscar-nominated 1971 musical starring Richard Chamberlain. In that version, royal ministers conspire to send Cinderella away even after her Prince has come, adding insult to injury. Watch a fan's mashup

3. Stepmom
It’s every film studio executive’s dream. After you divorce the older, demanding mother of your children (Susan Sarandon), you meet the young and beautiful Julia Roberts who wants to play stepmom to your kids. Bonus: your wife dies of cancer after everyone makes friends, so you can move on without any emotional hangover (or financial maintenance). Roberts’s character isn’t so much evil as clueless, one-dimensional and very very annoying. Trailer

4. Enchanted
The stepmother in this 2007 Disney princess story isn't related to the protagonist Giselle. The Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) is stepmum to Prince Edward and she pushes Giselle down a magic well to keep them apart. The well actually leads to New York City , where Giselle finds true love with Dr. McDreamy. Oh wait, that's Seattle and Grey's Anatomy. Anyway, forgetting the slightly creepy outcome where the young girl marries the 40something guy, the movie does feature Sarandon sporting seriously fierce eye makeup and stomping around in fabulous high dudgeon. See Sarandon work her look.

5. St Elmo's Fire
You never see the stepmonster that Jules (Demi Moore) is obsessing over. But she's dying and, in a cocaine-addled hysteria, Jules prattles on about how she can arrange a cheap funeral, with ideas such as dressing up her stepmum as a large cat. Driven by her obsession and fuelled by hate of her stepmother, Jules dates dodgy guys with sportscars, has empty sex and eventually has a nervous breakdown. Some websites claim the movie coined the term “step-monster”. Seems unlikely, but then again it briefly turned Judd Nelson into a sex symbol, so anything’s possible. Trailer and an almost unwatchable music video

6. My Stepmother Is an Alien

Kim Basinger as Celeste comes to earth and seduces Dan Akroyd’s Steven Mills - talk about an alien concept. Mills’s daughter (Alyson Hannigan) notices Celeste’s out-of-this-world behaviour but in the end, no, wait we won’t ruin it for you. Celeste is perhaps the worst stepmother on our list as a result of being in the worst movie on the list. Trailer


7. Juno
This one isn't strictly a wicked stepmother. In fact Juno's stepmother takes the tough-but-kind approach to the teenager, who is pregnant at 16. On hearing the unexpected news she says: "I was hoping she was expelled or into hard drugs." Trailer

8. Wicked Stepmother
This was the last film Bette Davis starred in; she died a few months after it was released. Davis plays a witch who marries Sam (Lionel Stander), to the objection of her new stepdaughter, a vegetarian. She chainsmokes, she eats meat and she's got Bette Davis eyes. Spooky. Scene from Wicked Stepmother featuring Tom Bosley.

9. Nanny McPhee
Emma Thompson wrote the screenplay to this magical movie, in which Celia Imrie plays the odious widow Selma Quickly. While she doesn’t actually succeed in becoming stepmother to Colin Firth's seven children, the cartoonishly oversexed Mrs Quickly is odious and terrifying, even snapping the children’s beloved rattle – their only memento of their mother. Luckily this evil stepmother flees after the cake fight and the beautiful and kind scullery maid is installed as loving stepmum. Awwwww. Trailer

10. The Sound of Music
The beautiful, materialistic and vain Baroness Schrader (Eleanor Parker) is the psychic twin of Disney stepmums, right down the wool she pulls over the eyes of her fiance Captain von Trapp. Once they’re hitched, she plans to pack away that adorable all-singing all-dancing brood to boarding school. Naturally she is eventually sent packing by a nun gone wild. Yet according to research for a play for BBC Radio 4, in reality it was the young nun who was pushy and manipulative, while the older Baroness was poorly treated by the Captain before being jilted. Score one for the other side. Trailer