The trope of the Scream Queen resides in a certain niche block of pop culture. Scream Queen is the term used to describe a lead female actor in a horror movie. But just what makes someone a Scream Queen? First off, they must be in a horror movie, hopefully, a good one. The kind of scary movie certainly plays a role. A film like Scream is filled with people hollering at the top of their lungs (hence the title). An atmospheric movie like It Follows is... not. Yet, they are both very, very scary. Second, calling somebody a Scream Queen is something of a misnomer. An actress can be called that without ever actually screaming (though some Scream Queens do, in fact, scream very well).

Updated May 26, 2023: If you're a fan of these final girls, you'll be glad to know even more of these leading ladies have been recently added by Amanda Minchin.

How a Scream Queen distinguishes herself in a given role, however, is far more important than how often she exercises her vocal talents. The many shrieks and squeals she elicits from the audience are a good indication, of course, but they should not be the only ones. The truth is no matter what an excellent Scream Queen does on screen, the audience should always be able to resonate with her in some way. The best of them give us an insight into hope and loss and a sense of undying resiliency against all odds. These are just some of the women who have stuck with us throughout the years. Perhaps they, too, will give you something to scream about!

17 Allison Williams

M3GAN Brings Allison Williams Back to Blumhouse for a Living Doll Nightmare
Universal Pictures
 

While Allison Williams may not (yet) have nearly as many films under her belt as others on this, what she has managed to accomplish in her few terrifying endeavors has been beyond commendable. While primarily known for her role on the hit HBO series Girls, her breakout horror role was in Blumhouse's favorite Get Out. Her spine-chilling portrayal of girlfriend turned foe in the film was nothing short of inspiring, particularly when we finally get to see her evil genius at work. She recently returned to Blumhouse, starring in the February 2023 release of M3GAN. Williams likely has a long, horror future ahead of her.

16 Felissa Rose

Felissa Rose in Sleepaway Camp.
United Film Distribution Company

Felissa Rose is brilliant because she completely takes you by surprise. The film that put her on the map was Sleepaway Camp. Also, like future honoree Jamie Lee Curtis, this was her very first film and the film that gave her the Scream Queen pedigree to boot.

Of course, Felissa Rose has gone on to do a bevy of other films, with names like Satan's Playground, Aliens vs. A-Holes and Silent Night, and Zombie Night. However, she could have retired from the business and moved away to a remote island, and her work as Angela in Sleepaway Camp would have more than solidified her status as Scream Queen. Either way, this actress has certainly made her bones in the genre.

15 Betsy Palmer

Betsy Palmer as Pamela Voorhees
Paramount

With more than 60 films to her credit, crossing a litany of genres, Betsy Palmer might just be the grand dame of Scream Queens. She played Pamela Voorhees, the scariest mother of all time in Friday the 13th. The franchise's first killer would later serve as the inspiration for her son Jason. What makes her unique is her ability to radiate both warmth and cold-bloodedness. What gives Betsy Palmer her cachet is that she essentially brought the spawn of Satan into the world. Her performance is so strong, so measured, and so well conceived that nobody wonders who Jason's dad is.

It is Betsy Palmer, and Betsy Palmer alone, who elevated the Scream Queen by making her one of the toughest mothers to ever grace the silver screen. While Palmer was dismissive of the role and grew to hate it, her legacy as the character lives on to this very day as Pamela Voorhes will get her own prequel series from Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller. Palmer showed that the Scream Queen is a flexible title and not just one reserved for the victims but also the killers.

14 Sarah Paulson

Sarah Paulson in AHS
Disney+

There are a limited but slowly increasing number of Scream Queens who come from the small screen, but Sarah Paulson was one of the first. When American Horror Story first became a hit success in 2011, it was unlikely Paulson, or anyone else for that matter, knew just how long the edgy series would last. From an intrepid reporter to a medium to a coven leader and cult follower, Paulson has played it all on the program (including a pair of conjoined twins!).

This, however, was far from Paulson’s first foray into the television horror scene. She’d played Merlyn Temple in 1995’s ever-creepy American Gothic. She recently starred in Ratchet, focusing on the character of Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. She has also taken center stage in a variety of horror films recently, from 2019's Glass to 2020's Run. Regardless of her roles, she brings about an element of theatricality and grace that are unique to her and her alone.

13 Emma Roberts

Emma Roberts in Scream Queens
Fox

It would be difficult to have a modern list of horror divas without at least mentioning an actor or two from the TV series Scream Queens. Emma Roberts is a major recurring horror star. She first entered the genre in 2011 with a role in Scream 4. She starred in American Horror Story: Coven in 2013. She has since gone on to star in follow-up seasons Freak Show, Cult, Apocalypse, 1984, and will star in the upcoming season Delicate.

Related: The Best New Horror Movie Scream Queens For the Modern Era

In between this, she helped headline the short-lived horror comedy Scream Queens TV series. She has been a recurring figure in horror films, including 2020's The Hunt and 2022's Abandoned.

12 Adrienne Barbeau

Adrienne Barbeau in The Fog
AVCO Embassy Pictures

Where does one begin with this 1970s Scream Queen who broke the mold? First off, she was in Someone's Watching Me!, The Fog, Escape From New York, Swamp Thing, Creepshow... and we haven't even gotten out of the early '80s!

What makes Adrienne Barbeau so great to watch is not just her brainy beauty but the fact that she isn't trying to be a Scream Queen but that she's just trying to play each person to the best of her abilities. With a fairly lengthy resume of more than 125 films, Adrienne Barbeau seems to have done it all; however, it's her work as a Scream Queen that is the stuff of legend.

11 Mia Goth

Mia Goth as Pearl
A24

Mia Goth is the indie wild child of this group. Born Mia Gypsy Mello da Silva Goth, her role as unassuming yet ethereal Scream Queen is one that is jam-packed with films over the last decade... and with a last name like Goth, how couldn't she be?

Roles in A Cure for Wellness and the reboot of Suspiria have helped to solidify her as a Scream Queen for a whole new era. Yet it is her role in film X that shot her to horror superstar status. In it, she plays the dual roles of both the main heroine and the main villain. She then starred in the films prequel film Pearl, which became a fan favorite among horror audiences and an instant iconic Halloween costume. She will return for the third entry in the franchise, MaXXXine. Goth is also set to star in Marvel Studio's Blade, as her bona fide Scream Queen status will give the superhero film some horror credentials.

10 Linnea Quigley

Linnea Quigley in Return of the Living Dead
Orion Pictures

Known for such films as The Return of the Living Dead, Creepozoids, and Silent Night, Deadly Night, Linnea Quigley is truly the quirky pledge of the Scream Queen sorority. It seems from the very beginning that Linnea Quigley knew the kind of actress she wanted to be.

Her career began in the mid-1970s with films like Death Sport and Don't Go Near the Park. The 1980s saw more of the same with roles in films like Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Dead Heat, and Robot Ninja. She began the 1990s with Virgin High and went on to do Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, Innocent Blood, and many other films that are the epitome of campy horror. Perhaps, this grand dame of Scream Queens summed it up best when she said, "It's really boring to play the good, nice girl."

9 Sarah Michelle Gellar

sarah michelle gellar wolf pack
Paramount+

Sarah Michelle Gellar is, without a doubt, a legendary Scream Queen icon. While some might know her best from her stint as the titular character in the hit television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, her claim to Scream Queen fame comes from more than just battling the bloodsucking undead of Sunnydale. Back in 1997, she also starred in back-to-back horror releases in the form of Scream 2, and I Know What You Did Last Summer. She’s iconic in the latter for taunting the serial murderer stalking her and her friends.

She would later star in the American remake of The Grudge. She also played the role of Daphne in both live-action Scooby Doo movies, which while not horror movies, very much are horror adjacent for kid audiences, and Daphne would traditionally be a victim in a traditional horror film. Gellar currently stars on Wolf Pack, a Paramount+ spin-off of Teen Wolf, and sees the star return to the horror television series roots that spawned her career.

8 Heather Langenkamp

Scream Queen Heather Langenkamp
    New Line Cinema

With more than 30 films to her credit, Heather Langenkamp seems pretty comfortable with just being Nancy from the A Nightmare on Elm Street series, a move which audiences clearly approve. Her work in this role is so good, so solid, and so uniquely her own that despite Rooney Mara being an incredible actress, she could not capture the magic in the 2010 reboot. Langenkamp has expressed interest in reprising her role as Nancy in A Nightmare on Elm Street follow-up, let's hope she gets the chance someday.

7 Jenna Ortega

X Jenna Ortega
A24

Jenna Ortega, in just two years, has broken out as a bonafide Scream Queen and the Gen-Z It Girl of the moment. She has risen to the top with an extensive and impressive horror resume. This former child star has seriously upped the ratings of the projects she’s chosen in recent years. Aside from her stellar reenactment of Wednesday Addams in Wednesday, her Netflix originals resume also includes appearances in You and The Babysitter: Killer Queen.

In 2022 all four of her movies released were horror films. Those included Scream, Studio 666, X, and American Carnage. In 2023 she reprised her role for Scream VI and likely will return for the seventh film in the popular horror franchise. She will once again reteam with director Tim Burton in Beetlejuice 2, where she will play the daughter of Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), which is set for release in 2024.

6 Danielle Harris

Scream Queen Danielle Harris
Galaxy International Releasing

It's pretty cool that Danielle Harris began her Scream Queen pedigree in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5 at such a young age. What's even cooler is her staying power as she returned to the Halloween franchise in the Rob Zombie reboot series years later. Harris has starred in a variety of low-budget horror films, including 2007's Left For Dead, 2009's Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet, 2010's Hatchet II, and 2014's See No Evil 2, just to name a few, makes her Scream Queen icon. She loves to inhabit the horror genre, and horror fans love seeing her appear.

5 Shelley Duvall

Shelley Duvall in The Shining
Warner Bros.

Shelley Duvall may not possess the same assets as most Scream Queens. However, it is Shelley Duvall's work in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining that singularly lands her here, without question. Yes, she appeared in the mid-'80s version of The Twilight Zone and movies like The 4th Floor and Big Monster on Campus, but The Shining is by far her Scream Queen-making moment.

In the film, Duvall played Wendy Torrance, a mother that just wants things to go right for her family. As her husband rapidly descends into madness, Wendy's transformation is more subtle but no less intense. She doesn't want to let go of the American Dream. She wants the hotel that her husband Jack is a caretaker of to work. She wants Danny, her son, to be okay. And, right before this all falls apart, just as her husband starts trying to kill his wife and their child, one can palpably feel Wendy wanting to scream. When it happens, it is a thing of glory, a true release of pent-up emotion brought on by elements both onscreen and off, the effects of which would haunt the actress for years to come. It is a scream worthy of Scream Queen status, regardless of Shelley Duvall's other movies.

4 Neve Campbell

Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescot in Scream 4
Dimension Films 

No horror character has survived and endured as much as Sidney Prescott, as played by Neve Campbell in the Scream movies. While Sidney might begin as the girl next door, she has become the most enduring final girl in horror history, starring in five of the six Scream movies and always managing to defeat the Ghostface killers. Despite her not being in Scream VI, her character's legacy lives on.

Five Scream movies would be enough to land Campell a spot on this list, but in 1996 she also starred in The Craft, a gothic supernatural film about teen witches. This and Scream make her the idol of every goth kid ever and a Scream Queen for the ages.

3 Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver- Alien
20th Century Fox

Alien was the film that showed us just how much of a survivor a Scream Queen could be. Sigourney Weaver's role here unfolds like a slow burn. Whereas previous horror heroines from Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween managed to just escape the killers, Ripley not only survives but kills the main monster, which was a groundbreaking move at the time. Ripley, and by extension, Sigourney Weaver, elevated what a Scream Queen could be.

Related: Here's Why the Alien Movies Are Renowned by Feminist Film Theorists

Sure, Weaver has more movies on her resume than just slashers, but she is so good in the Alien films that it almost doesn't matter. With arguably one of the best franchise sequels ever, this Scream Queen is in a league all on her own.

2 Janet Leigh

Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960)
Paramount Pictures

If you're going to go back to where it all began, we may have just found the birth of the Scream Queen. As Marion Crane in 1960s Psycho, Janet Leigh is the picture of fear and torment. She is uneasy in just about every frame of this movie, from the moment she makes off with the money she stole to her time spent in the Bates Motel talking to Norman (Anthony Perkins) to her eventual death at the hands of his "mother." This film was groundbreaking for its style, pacing, use of camera, and flat-out style. However, there had also never been a Scream Queen like Janet Leigh on screen before this.

Janet Leigh would go on to do a bevy of films after this, even appearing in such seminal fare as The Fog and Halloween: H20. But it is what she did in Psycho that will forever cement her status as a Scream Queen... That, plus she literally gave to the next and best Scream Queen on this list!

1 Jamie Lee Curtis

Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween Kills
Universal Pictures

Jamie Lee Curtis put the Queen in Scream Queens. She was already a horror royalty being the daughter of Janet Leigh, but her role as Laurie Strood in Halloween not only put her on the map but made the final girl template horror films still follow to this day. Halloween would go on to create a franchise that Curtis would return to another five times, most recently in Halloween Ends. However, it is pretty impressive that one film all but cemented her status in Scream Queen history.

Jamie Lee Curtis has had an impressive career outside the horror genre and recently won an Academy Award for her work in the film Everything Everywhere All At Once. Yet that win was not just for that movie, but her entire body of work that truly begins with Halloween. As a Scream Queen with an Academy Award, there is no denying that Jamie Lee Curtis is the best of the best.