He's been played by Alain Delon, Dennis Hopper, Matt Damon, Barry Pepper, John Malkovich and Ian Hart.
Now Andrew Scott has stepped into the shoes of Patricia Highsmith's villain Tom Ripley.
And what a prospect.
Shockingly overlooked during awards season after his superb lead performance in Andrew Haigh's movie 'All of Us Strangers,' Scott is one of the best actors working on the big and small screen right now.
The Dubliner seems ripe for a part like Tom Ripley and it's easy to understand why he would be drawn to playing Highsmith's most celebrated creation.
Tom's a talented conman and connoisseur of high art who tricks his way into high society.
But he is also a sociopath who will kill to protect his web of deceit.
Ripley is very good at staying two steps ahead of the police and also the loved ones of those he dupes and kills.
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His flair for forgery enables him to assume different identities and travel to exotic locations on false passports.
But because radio, film and TV producers, writers and directors keep returning to Highsmith's novels to adapt them, that means the bar for every actor portraying Tom is very high.
Every time an actor, writer and director dives into a new Ripley adaptation, the pressure is on them to justify why.
Fortunately writer director Steven Zaillian is more than up to that task in his eight part Netflix show 'Ripley'.
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Filmed in black and white on digital cameras with the help of Oscar winning cinematographer Robert Elswit, it might just be the most gorgeous television show we have ever seen.
An adaptation of Highsmith's 'The Talented Mr Ripley,' which Anthony Minghella turned into a critically acclaimed hit movie of the same name in 1999, Zaillian's version begins like a classic Cold War era American film noir.
Scott's Tom Ripley is scraping a living in New York as a con artist when he is approached by Bokeem Woodbine's private eye Alvin McCarron in a bar.
McCarron has been asked by Kenneth Lonergan's shipbuilding magnate Herbert Greenleaf to set up a meeting with Tom because he mistakenly believes he is an old school chum of his son, Johnny Flynn's Dickie.
Dickie has been galavanting around Italy, pursuing a dream of becoming a writer or an artist.
Herbert offers Tom the chance to go there, all expenses paid, to locate Dickie and persuade him to come home.
Jumping at the opportunity, Tom travels to Atrani on the Amalfi coast, inveigling his way into the lives of Dickie and his girlfriend, Dakota Fanning's Marge by pretending to recognise the magnate's son on a beach.
Dickie can't remember ever meeting Tom but is charmed by him.
Marge is, however, wary of him, believing Tom is leeching off them.
Tom is, of course, doing just that and he does little to persuade Dickie to come home, riding on his coattails as he lives the high life.
When Tom eventually confesses to Dickie that his dad has hired him to persuade him to come home, his new friend is so impressed by his honesty, he invites him to live with him in his villa.
This further arouses Marge's suspicions.
Marge isn't the only one who is suspicious of Tom.
Eliot Summer's socialite and playwright Freddie Miles is also unsure and he rebuffs Tom by excluding him from an invite to Dickie and Marge to join him on a ski trip to Cortina.
Doubts surface in Dickie's head too when he catches Tom wearing his clothes and when he receives a letter from his father warning him to be wary of him.
Pressured by Marge to sever all ties with Tom, Dickie takes him to Sanremo on a boat trip.
However that boat trip will have massive consequences for all.
Exquisitely shot by Elswit under Zaillian's assured direction, 'Ripley' doesn't just riff on film noir but is a love letter to Italian neo-realist cinema, the French New Wave, German expressionism as well as Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed's 'The Third Man'.
While episodes in Rome, Naples, Palermo and Venice specifically recall the work of great Italian directors like Federico Fellini and Roberto Rossellini, both in look and pacing, the show draws inspiration too from the work of great artists like Caravaggio, Picasso and Sir William Orpen.
And while Elswit deserves every ounce of praise for the atmosphere created onscreen, Joshua Raymond Lee and David O Rogers also do superb work as editors getting the pacing just right and helping Zaillian draw the viewer into an absorbing tale.
In a world where audiences have been trained to watch high octane, rapidly cut movies and TV shows, 'Ripley' unfolds at a slower, more deliberate pace.
But that pacing, its stunning black and white imagery, the deft angular shots captured by Elswit and the superb use of Italian locations give the show almost a hypnotic quality.
The fifth episode, in particular, set in Rome in the wee small hours as Tom tries to cover his tracks after a murder is a masterclass in visual storytelling.
Film students should study this episode closely to understand how Zaillian and his crew meticulously piece together imagery that in a fascinating and darkly comic way sums up the lengths to which Tom will go to avoid being caught.
The show's costume designers Giovanni Casalnuovo and Maurizio Millenotti do terrific work too, contributing to its brooding atmosphere.
As for the cast, Flynn and Fanning are wonderful as Dickie and Marge - portraying them as two adults who have turned their back on convention and responsibility to self-indulgently pursue artistic lives with little discernible talent.
Sumner impresses as well, injecting an air of understated menace even before Freddie threatens to expose Tom's deceit.
Maurizio Lombardi is excellent as the Italian detective Pietro Ravini who is tasked with piecing together the mystery around Dickie and Tom.
Margherita Buy as Tom's landlady in Rome Signora Buffi, Kenneth Lonergan as Herbert Greenleaf and Ann Cusack as his wife Emily, Fisher Stevens as a banker Edward T Cavanagh, Bokeem Woodbine as the private eye and Renato Solpietro as an Italian lowlife, Carlo all contribute.
However 'Ripley' unquestionably belongs to Andrew Scott who mesmerises as Highsmith's murderous sociopath.
A lot hinges on the lead's ability to convince as a charming conman and chilling murderer and he easily passes the test.
With Zaillian and Elswit focusing a lot on Scott's face, the Irishman demonstrates how great screen acting isn't always about what you say but how you look.
At various stages of the show, Scott conveys Tom's ruthlessness, deviousness, desperation, panic, lust and awe with just a simple glance.
And even though the Dubliner and Flynn are at least two decades older than the characters they are portraying, their casting only adds to the sense of desperation on both Tom and Dickie's parts to avoid conventional lives.
In a delicious piece of casting, John Malkovich turns up as Reeves Minot, a forger who Ripley encounters in Venice.
Watching Malkovich act opposite Scott is a delight.
It's like watching a baton being passed from one great actor to another and you can see both actors are getting a hell of a kick out of it.
However the show's biggest joy is watching Tom plot his way out of the tightest of corners, with Zaillian and Scott doing a superb job making the audience feel complicit in his crimes.
It's so well executed, you can't help but feel that it will take a really outstanding show to better 'Ripley' this year for writing, direction, acting or visual aesthetic.
With other Ripley novels awaiting adaptation, surely Netflix will not let the opportunity pass to allow Zaillian to further adapt them?
If they do let it slip, the more fool them.
('Ripley' was made available for streaming on Netflix on April 4, 2024)
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