Paul Sheldon
Paul Sheldon
Played By: James Caan
- Adaptational Nice Guy: While he isn't a Jerkass by any means in the book, he does a lot of snarking in his narration, hates Annie and even compares his fight with Annie to rape. In the film, Paul is a full-blown Nice Guy whose only moment of wrath is giving back what Annie gave him.
- Agony of the Feet: A foot is cut off in the book. In the movie, his ankles are smashed.
- Beware the Nice Ones: While he's a nice guy, he ultimately brutally attacks Annie, taking enormous glee in making her suffer after the hell she's put him through.
- Dark and Troubled Past: In the film Paul mentions he grew up in the slums while defending his manuscript to Annie. In the book it's implied he grew up in Derry, which is just as bad, if not worse.
- Deadpan Snarker: His inner monologue has a few in the book, usually directed at himself or Annie. Since the audience isn't privy to his inner monologue in the movie, he's more outwardly snarky.
- The Dog Bites Back: In the end, he puts Annie through a bit of emotional torture and a lot of physical torture by tricking her into thinking he's burned the manuscript for Misery's Return before stuffing the burning pages into her mouth, hitting her over the head with a typewriter, and tryng to rip her eyes out.
- Fingore: In the book, Annie chops off one of his thumbs and threatens to make him eat it.
- Guile Hero: While Annie unusually has the upper hand with her psychotic cunning and foresight, in the book, he tricks Annie into thinking he's burnt Misery's Return, but actually he just burnt a pile of blank paper with the title sheet on it, while hiding the actual manuscript under the bed. He also knows how to keep himself alive by taking advantage of the fact that only he can give her what she wants.
- Handicapped Badass: He's stuck in bed and in a wheelchair due to the accident and Annie's abuse, but by the end, he gives as good as he gets.
- Nice Guy: In the film, Paul is depicted as a kind and friendly man who in spite of his hatred for the Misery series is not a Fan Hater and nothing but polite and gracious to Annie after she rescues him. It makes what happens to him all the worse.
- Nice to the Waiter: He's unfailingly polite to the hotel staff, tries to avoid causing them unnecessary trouble, and even gives the waiter who brings him his champagne a fifty-dollar tip. In the film ending, despite almost freaking out from mistaking a waitress for Annie, he nevertheless replies to her calling herself his "number one fan" with just a bitter smile.
- Only in It for the Money: The reason he kept writing his Misery series was because he needed to pay for his daughter's medical treatment and education; he hated the books, but they brought in the dough. However, he comes to realize that writing to win awards isn't much better.
- Sanity Has Advantages: While he's largely at Annie's mercy, he does have one advantage over her: she allows her love of Misery to cloud her judgment and he can manipulate her by invoking the character's honor, wellbeing, etc.
- Scheherezade Gambit: Describes himself as the titular queen in regards to Annie. Every time Annie is close to killing him, he uses the fact that Misery's Return is not finished, and that if she wants to read it, she has to keep him alive.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Downplayed. While he comes to appreciate Annie's occasional moments of kindness towards him, he still makes it clear that they don't make up for the hell she's putting him through.
Annie Wilkes
Anne Marie "Annie" Wilkes
Played By: Kathy Bates
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Downplayed; she's plain-looking and a bit frumpy in the movie, but that's still a marked improvement in terms of appearance over her book counterpart, who was an unkempt blob of a woman. She also dresses better in the movie than in the book, and her movie self lacks the original's extremely unflattering makeup.
- Adaptational Intelligence: While still cunning in the book, she's puts up a much more convincing Mask of Sanity in the film, taking care of her looks and almost fooling the sheriff with her last minute cover-up when he comes searching for Paul.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: She's still an unstable psycho in the movie, but she's more cordial with Paul even after reading Misery's Child and her worst torments of him (like forcing him to drink soapy water and cutting off his thumb) are removed.
- Animal Motifs: Pigs, for rather obvious reasons.
- Ax-Crazy: Quite literally in the case of Paul's foot, but she is a concoction of multiple brands of psychopathy.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: When she was in college, she poisoned her and her roommate's shared cat so she could use its corpse to make said roommate fall down some stairs to her death.
- Bad Samaritan: To Paul, whom she initially takes in before subjecting him to horrific abuse. However, Paul speculates that if he didn't happen to be the writer of the novels Annie is obsessed with, she would have called the hospital and gotten him there as soon as possible, mainly to show to people like those cockadoodie Roydmans that she's a good, responsible citizen.
- Battleaxe Nurse: Less known for her bedside manner and more known for killing and torturing her patients.
- Beware the Silly Ones: She has a cheery facade, uses ridiculous childish expressions like "cockadoodie," and has a retreat somewhere up the mountain she calls her "laughing place"... where she hides the body of a state trooper she murdered with a lawnmower.
- Big Eater: When Annie gets into one of her "moods", she basically binges like crazy.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Annie's morality, such as it is, is a classic case of this. In certain ways she is almost prudish, exhibiting a childish distaste for swearing, smoking, and other types of "adult vices". She refuses to take Paul's money out of his wallet, even though she has already gone through it to confiscate his IDs. But when it comes to holding a man prisoner against his will for months, or murdering patients under her care, Annie justifies it by telling herself they are "poor poor things" that are better off dead (and as Paul realizes, she sees all of humanity as either poor poor things or "dirty birdies" that are out to get her).
- Book Dumb: Zig-zagged. She went to higher education, obtained a nursing degree, and has worked in hospitals across the country, so when it comes to medicine and triage, she is very knowledgeable. She also has a few areas of practical knowledge to call upon, things a woman living alone in the mountains would need to know, such as carpentry and home maintenance (and self-defense, as Paul finds when she informs him that she took judo classes). But in most other areas, particularly areas of culture, Annie is shockingly ignorant, being unaware of basic writing tropes such as the Deus ex Machina which even most non-writers are familiar with (though as Paul comes to understand, she understands the concept in everything but name).
- Crazy-Prepared: Annie discovers that Paul has managed to get out of the locked bedroom after taping hairs from her own head over objects in the house and leaving for a while, and coming back later to find them broken. The crazy part? She did this everywhere in the house, including upstairs and in the shed out back, places it would have been almost impossible for Paul to get in his injured state. Then there is the alibi Annie explains to Paul after she kills the young state trooper: she'll take an empty Pepsi bottle and press the trooper's fingers on it, then toss it in a ditch a few miles up the road, and mention to any cops that come by that she did speak with the trooper, and she gave him a Pepsi for the road because it was hot that day.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Parodied. She's got no issue holding Paul hostage and torturing him to write another Misery book, but even she isn't willing to accept a lazy copout of the previous book's ending being retconned just to get her favorite character back. Also, she does not approve of swearing.
- Fat Bitch: Unlike Kathy Bates' more polished depiction, book Annie is large and slovenly with a giant sweet tooth and of course is a psychotic kidnapper and murderer.
- Faux Affably Evil: Her small acts of caring when being a nurse quickly get thrown out if she's displeased.
- Hidden Depths: She's capable of surprising insights when it comes to storytelling and literary conventions. With her (very undesired) help, Paul manages to turn Misery from a shallow beauty to a surprisingly deep character.
- I'm Your Biggest Fan: Paul Sheldon's number one fan to be exact.
- Ironic Name: Saint Anne and the Virgin Mary are worshiped as protectors of mothers and women in labor. Annie committed most of her murders in a maternity ward.
- I Was Quite a Looker: When Paul goes through her scrapbook, he finds that she was "startlingly pretty" when she was younger.
- Loony Fan: She's so obsessed with Paul Sheldon's Misery series that she kidnaps and tortures him over the last Misery book.
- Madness-Induced Omnivore: Annie is a severely mentally ill woman who paradoxically expresses pity for those she kills. At one point, she picks up a rat that had been killed by one of her traps and, noticing some of its blood on her hand, licks her fingers while mourning the animal.
- Mask of Sanity: In the film, Annie manages to appear as a well-meaning and polite woman who could blend easily into a crowd. If anything, she can come across as a bit eccentric in her religious views and with a naive interest in romance novels. Whenever the mask slips, however, oh boy...
- Murder-Suicide: What she plans to do once Paul finishes Misery's Return.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Annie Wilkes was based off of a man who declared himself to be Stephen King's "number one fan". What makes him a celebrity is that said fan was Mark David Chapman, the killer of John Lennon.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: She abhors swearing, so the few times she blurts out a curse word, it's a clear sign that things are quickly going to get worse.
- The Paranoiac: She thinks everyone is out to get her, from her neighbors the Roydmans to a polite county official who tells her she's had a lien placed on her for failure to pay her taxes. This is partly due to her mental issues, but also partly rooted in reality, since she's an infamous figure in her neck of the woods due to being a suspected child murderer. For what it's worth, Paul also suspects there's something amiss; since she's been served papers for missing a quarterly tax payment, while he knows there are many people who are years behind on that front, it's possible the town might be trying to force her off her land.
- Patricide: One of her victims was her own father.
- Profanity Police: Hates it when Paul, or anyone swears, and has her own list of childish substitutes (cock-a-doodie, dirty birdie, etc.) When she does actually swear, shit has hit the fan.
- Psychopathic Womanchild: She's unhealthily attached to a fictional character, uses childlike euphemisms instead of swearing, and throws what can only be described as tantrums when she's inconvenienced.
- Serial Killer: After killing her father and one of her schoolmates, she went on murdering elderly patients and children for years, covering up the deaths as natural instances.
- Sinister Sweet Tooth: Annie loves ice cream, cookies, and soda.
- Stalker without a Crush: Before the accident that starts the plot, she would sometimes spy on Paul from a distance as he was writing during his stays the hotel.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: In the movie, she looks like an ordinary middle-aged woman, and is able to act like a regular person well enough to hide her deranged psychopathy in public. Being played by the then-unknown Kathy Bates only adds to the effect.
- Villain Has a Point:
- While she obviously takes things way too far, Paul eventually acknowledges that he can't fault Annie for being upset at Misery's death. After all, causing such an emotional response in the reader is any author's goal, and he himself was left grief-stricken after a character died in a book he read.
- Paul also concedes that some of Annie's writing criticism is actually quite perceptive, even when it's of his own writing. Not only does he find her points about the Cliffhanger Cop Out and the Deus ex Machina being lazy entirely accurate, but he also comes to agree with her assessment of Fast Cars being pretentious.
- Villain Raises a Toast: In the movie, Annie and Paul make a toast to the return of Misery Chastain."To Misery."
- Would Hurt a Child: Part of her extensive kill count includes several babies during her time as head nurse of the maternity ward.
