Annie Wilkes is the former nurse and self-described “number one fan” at the center of Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery. She rescues her favorite author from a car wreck, nurses him back to health and then refuses to let him leave. She has no mask, no supernatural power and barely a body count on screen, and she is still one of the most frightening villains in horror. Kathy Bates won the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing her in Rob Reiner’s 1990 film, and King has named Annie his personal favorite among all the characters he has created.
At a glance
| Franchise | Misery (Stephen King) |
| First appearance | Novel Misery (1987); film Misery (1990) |
| Creator | Stephen King. The 1990 film was directed by Rob Reiner from a screenplay by William Goldman. |
| Portrayed by | Kathy Bates (Misery, 1990) Sharon Gless (London stage play, 1992) Laurie Metcalf (Broadway, 2015–2016) Lizzy Caplan (alternate young Annie, Castle Rock season 2, 2019) Danica Dreyer (alternate young Annie, The Monkey, 2025) |
| Weapons and methods | Sedatives and painkillers, a sledgehammer (film), an axe and a blowtorch (novel), a shotgun (film), and isolation: she keeps her captive drugged, bedridden and hidden |
Origin story and backstory
Novelist Paul Sheldon is famous for a series of Victorian romance novels starring Misery Chastain, a character he has grown to hate. After finishing a serious new manuscript at a Colorado hotel, he crashes his car in a snowstorm. Annie Wilkes, who lives alone on a remote farm nearby, pulls him from the wreck. She tells him she is his biggest fan, sets his broken legs and keeps him in her spare room. She also neglects to tell anyone he is there.
In Rob Reiner’s 1990 film, James Caan plays Paul and Kathy Bates plays Annie, with Richard Farnsworth and Frances Sternhagen as the small-town sheriff and his wife and Lauren Bacall as Paul’s agent. The film keeps the story almost entirely inside Annie’s remote farmhouse, which makes the power she holds over a bedridden man feel suffocating.
Then she reads the latest Misery novel and discovers that Paul has killed Misery off. Annie forces him to burn his new manuscript and write a book bringing Misery back to life. While she is away, Paul finds her scrapbook and learns the truth. The novel gives Annie a detailed history: born in Bakersfield, California, she trained as a nurse and worked at hospitals around the country, and her clippings link her to a long trail of deaths, including infants in her care at a hospital in Boulder. She was tried for those deaths and acquitted for lack of evidence.
Book vs. film
Reiner and Goldman kept King’s story but toned down Annie’s worst acts. The best-known example is the punishment for Paul’s escape attempts: in the novel she takes an axe to his foot, while in the film she breaks his ankles with a sledgehammer. Some of the novel’s other cruelties never reach the screen, and the deaths of the policeman who comes looking for Paul differ between versions. King has said that Annie “may seem psychopathic to us,” but sees herself as perfectly sane and even heroic.
Iconic moments
- “I’m your number one fan” (1987 and 1990): The line that turned a warm compliment into a threat.
- Cockadoodie (1987 and 1990): Annie can’t stand profanity and uses childlike substitutes like “cockadoodie” and “dirty bird,” which makes her sudden rages even more unsettling.
- Misery is dead (1990): Annie finishes the book and comes to Paul’s room shaking with fury, revealing that no one knows where he is.
- The sledgehammer (1990): One of the most infamous scenes in horror. The film cuts away quickly, but the build-up and the sound are enough.
- The sheriff (1990): Richard Farnsworth’s small-town sheriff comes close to finding Paul, and the tension of his visit carries the film’s last act.
- The final fight (1987 and 1990): Paul turns his manuscript and his typewriter against his captor in a desperate last stand.
Appearances
Novel, film and television
- Misery (novel, 1987)
- Misery (film, 1990)
- Castle Rock season 2 (Hulu, 2019), an alternate take on a younger Annie played by Lizzy Caplan
- The Monkey (2025), a brief nod in which the young twins’ babysitter, an alternate young Annie, is played by Danica Dreyer
Stage and other versions
Stage: Simon Moore’s 1992 London play starred Sharon Gless, and a 2005 UK production starred Susan Penhaligon. A Broadway version ran from November 2015 to February 2016 with Laurie Metcalf as Annie and Bruce Willis as Paul, and Metcalf received a Tony nomination. Other: Kathy Bates revived the character for a 2008 DirecTV commercial, and the Tamil film Julie Ganapathi (2003) is loosely based on the novel. The fictional Stephen King of The Dark Tower VII (2004) also discusses Annie.
Trivia and behind-the-scenes facts
- King has said the idea came to him in a dream on a flight to London. He wrote it down on an American Airlines cocktail napkin and began the book at Brown’s Hotel, at a desk once owned by Rudyard Kipling.
- King has said he originally planned for Annie to force Paul to write a book that she would then bind in his skin, an idea he dropped while writing.
- The novel’s working title was The Annie Wilkes Edition. Misery was originally planned as a Richard Bachman book, but King’s pseudonym was exposed before it came out.
- King has linked the story to fan reaction to his fantasy novel The Eyes of the Dragon and to his own struggles with addiction at the time.
- Misery won the first Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel and reached No. 4 on the New York Times bestseller list.
- Anjelica Huston and Bette Midler both turned down the role of Annie. According to Reiner, it was William Goldman who suggested Kathy Bates, then best known as a stage actress.
- Bates’ Oscar made Misery the only film based on a Stephen King novel to win an Academy Award.
- Misery opened on November 30, 1990, and grossed about $61 million worldwide. It was shot partly in Genoa, Nevada, with a score by Marc Shaiman.
- In the DVD commentary, Reiner said Annie was loosely based on Genene Jones, a nurse believed to have killed children in her care.
- The American Film Institute ranked Annie the 17th greatest villain in film history.
- In a 2022 interview, King picked Annie as his favorite of all his characters, saying simply that she “was fun.”