Cocky blond guys are a staple of ’80s movies. Here are 12 of our favorites.
Roy Stalin (played by Aaron Dozier in Better Off Dead)
The cocky blond guy in an ’80s movie is the too handsome, too perfect preppie, jock, bully or fighter pilot who offers himself up as a seemingly unbeatable rival for the protagonist.
The quintessential cocky blond guy in an ’80s movie may be Roy Stalin, the ski-team captain in the 1985 masterpiece Better of Dead who is introduced skiing the deadly K12, then smoothly stealing Beth (Amanda Wyss), the girlfriend of Lane Meyer (John Cusack).
You know Stalin is going to be a great villain from his name alone, but Aaron Dozier nails every single line, especially his opener to Beth: “You’ll make a fine little helper — what’s your name?”
He’s also as good at insults as he is at skiing, which almost makes you root for him. And he’s just the first cocky blond guy on this list to appear in a movie written and directed by the great “Savage” Steve Holland.
Johnny (played by William Zabka in The Karate Kid)
Johnny Lawrence is a bully so ruthless that he doesn’t even flinch when one of his Cobra Kai toadies calls for him to “get him a body bag!” during his All-Valley karate battle with Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) at the end of 1984’s Karate Kid.
Of course, as his arc in the Karate Kid TV spinoff Cobra Kai proved, even cocky blond guys in ’80s movies are more complex than they seem — Cobra Kai has shown us the softer side of Johnny as he embraces fatherhood and the far less frequent use of body bags.
Iceman (played by Val Kilmer in Top Gun)
Much has been written about a thing that everyone notices on a second or third viewing of Top Gun: Pete “Maverick” Mitchell’s arch nemesis, Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, is a good guy. And not just at the end, when he and Maverick have their “you can be my wingman any time” moment — Iceman is a great dude from the start.
He’s a by-the-book, excellent pilot who is rightly concerned about Maverick endangering fellow pilots, and he deserves all of his success. He’s cocky, yes, but a lot less cocky than Maverick. The Top Gun sequel Top Gun: Maverick seems to acknowledge all this, showing that Iceman has earned a promotion to admiral and commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Scotty (Played by Grant Kramer in Hardbodies)
Through a series of unlikely events, cool-guy surfer Scotty (Grant Kramer) agrees to teach three down-on-their luck guys how to pick up young women on the beach through the art of “dialoguing” (aka “talking with them.)” His specific M.O. is to promise is the BBD — “the bigger and better deal” — providing hope that you’ll promise them a brighter future somewhere far away.
In real life, of course, the BBD usually works better if you’re promising to move someone to rather than from an idyllic beach town. But OK.
Teddy Beckersted (Played by Matt Mulhern in One Crazy Summer)
One Crazy Summer is an interesting movie. Released one year after Better Off Dead, in 1986, it plays almost like the further adventures of John Cusack’s Lane Meyer. Writer-director “Savage” Steve Holland is back, as are Better Off Dead cast members Cusack, Curtis Armstrong, and Laura Waterbury.
But for some reason, the names have changed, and there’s a new cocky blond guy — one who is even less likable than the last cocky blond guy. Matt Mulhern skillfully plays Ferrari-driving rich kid Teddy Beckersted as a spoiled brat who can’t even stand to hear the word work.
He could never ski the K12.
Ivan Drago (played by Dolph Lundgren in Rocky IV)
You have to hand it to Ivan Drago, the spiky-haired killer Soviet boxer of Rocky IV: He has a right to be cocky. After mercilessly dispatching Apollo Creed with an ice-cold “if he dies, he dies,” he plots world domination by crushing Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone).
He nearly has his way, but Rocky’s heart wins out over Drago’s intense discipline (and USSR-provided steroids). Eventually a respect forms between Rocky and Drago, and maybe between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
By Creed II, in which Drago returns, we kind of feel for the guy.
Biff Tannen (played by Thomas Wilson in the Back to the Future trilogy)
Even as we’ve learned to begrudgingly respect some of the cocky blond guys on this list, we still hate this guy. With his unlikely but oh-so-common mix of stupidity and condescension, he terrorizes the lovable McFly family across the decades. We wish he’d make like a tree… and get outta here.
Even when Marty (Michael J. Fox) changed history in the first movie, so that Biff becomes a supplicant to his now-cool dad (Crispin Glover), Biff is so spineless that we still don’t like him.
Kudos to Thomas F. Wilson for his commitment to making Biff so transcendently awful.
Steff McKee (played by James Spader in Pretty in Pink)
Feather-haired rich kid Steff is the epitome of blond cocky ’80s entitlement. Spader makes him sound drugged-up and miserable most of the time, even as he pretends to have best friend Blane’s interests at heart.
Blane (Andrew McCarthy) eventually sees the light and chooses his new romance with the plucky Andie (Molly Ringwald) over his toxic friendship with Steff. Pretty in Pink was just one of many films that showed Spader’s acuity at playing detached, snobbish characters whose parents gave them more money than hugs.
Tad Allagash (played by Kiefer Sutherland in Bright Lights, Big City)
KIefer Sutherland has a big job in Bright Lights, Big City: to make Michael J. Fox’s Jamie Conway seem soulful and human by comparison to his nightclubbing lothario, Tad, who spends his nights seeking out “dances to be danced, drugs to be hoovered, women to be Allagashed.”
He’s the kind of guy who encourages his buddy to say his wife is dead because it will make ladies more likely to sleep with him. Kiefer Sutherland is great at cocky blond guy roles, but stresses that he is not his characters. As he once told GQ, “I run into people who won’t shake my hand because of a characters that I’ve played.”
Of course, he probably doesn’t mean Tad Allagash. But he might mean the next character on our list.
David (played by Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys)
The sadistic leader of a vampire gang as understandable faith in his own superhuman abilities and seems unimpressed by just about everyone else. With the black leather and spiky blond hair combination so popular in the ’80s, he has undying swagger, modeled on Billy Idol.
“David is a character who at least on paper is supposed to be cool and sexy, and has a girlfriend,” Sutherland explained to GQ. He’s charismatic, for sure, but uses his powers for evil.
Stan Gable (played by Ted McGinley in Revenge of the Nerds)
The powerful and charismatic Stan Gable (Ted McGinley), a two-time All American quarterback who is also handy with a javelin and president of the Greek Council, is a perfect foil for the nerds — especially because of his maddening above-it-all attitude and surface politeness.
Of course, none of this justifies the absolutely insane scene in which lead nerd Lewis (Robert Carradine) impersonates Stan to seduce his girlfriend, Betty Childs (Julie Montgomery) — a low point in ’80s movies.
Nick Rivers (Played by Val Kilmer in Top Secret)
Yes, Val Kilmer appears twice on our list of the Best Cocky Blond Guys in ’80s Movies, making him perhaps the all-time best of the best. (We could have easily added his character in Real Genius, as well). Kilmer specialized in playing cocky blond guys who could back up their cockiness with genuine wit and skill.
Nick Rivers — or as he’s sometimes described in Top Secret, “the American singer Nick Rivers” — is not only a talented Elvis-like dreamboat vocalist, but also a quite competent member of the French Resistance and extremely adept underwater drawler. We love this guy.
Honorable Mention for Feyd Rautha (played by Sting in Dune)
As cool as David’s look is, Sting kind of got there first with his 1984 portrayal of the preening, cackling nephew of Baron Vladimir Harkonnen. His sinister portrayal is one of the few unmitigated successes of David Lynch’s troubled attempt to adapt the 1965 Frank Herbert novel.
Elvis star Austin Butler understandable went in a very different direction to play the cruel Feyd-Rautha in Dune 2: He’s bald.
We initially counted Feyd Rautha as blond, because Sting is blond, but we’ve heard the complaints that Feyd’s hair is actually red or orange, so we’re relegating him to an honorable mention.
Honorable Mention for Russ Wheeler (Cary Elwes in Days of Thunder)
The only reason we can’t officially included Russ Wheeler on this list is that Days of Thunder came out in 1990, which some people consider the last year of the ’80s, and others consider the first year of the ’90s.
After playing an eminently charming and lovable hero in The Princess Bride, Elwes played way against type as Russ Wheeler, a lowdown, dirty racer and a perfect antagonist to Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise).
Some critics referred to Days of Thunder as “Top Car” because of its supposed similarities to Top Gun, but it’s very much its own quite enjoyable movie. And Wheeler is much less sympathetic than Iceman.
Also
Much respect to the 2001 teen-comedy epic Not Another Teen Movie for identifying the cocky blond guy phenomenon with a character named Austin – aka The Cocky Blond Guy — perfectly played by Eric Christian Olsen (above).
Liked Our List of Cocky Blond Guys in ’80s Movies?
If so, we bet you’ll also enjoy this list of 12 Rad ’80s Movies Only Cool Kids Remember or this list of the 11 Best Cute Brunette Friends in ’80s Movies, featuring three of the movies in the gallery you’ve just perused.
Main image: One Crazy Summer.