Annie Wilkes

Annie Wilkes
Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes
First appearance	Misery (novel)
Last appearance	Misery (film)
Created by	Stephen King
Portrayed by	Kathy Bates
Information
Nickname(s)	Dragon Lady
Gender	Female
Occupation	Nurse (by training), farmer
Family	Carl Wilkes (father) Nancy Wilkes (mother)
Spouse(s)	Ralph Dugan (divorced)

Anne Marie Wilkes Dugan, usually known as Annie Wilkes, is a character in the 1987 novel Misery, by Stephen King. In the 1990 film adaptation of the novel, Annie Wilkes was portrayed by Kathy Bates, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal. The American Film Institute included Annie Wilkes (as played by Bates) in their "100 Heroes and Villains" list, ranking her as the 17th most iconic villain (and sixth most iconic villainess) in film history. A nurse by training, she has become one of the stereotypes of the nurse as a torturer and angel of death.

The novel provides Wilkes' backstory, stating that she was born in Bakersfield, California on April 1, 1943 and graduated from the University of Southern California's nursing school in 1966. After several years of working in hospitals across the country, she settled in a remote portion of Colorado's Western Slope.

In both the book and movie, Wilkes rescues protagonist Paul Sheldon after he breaks both of his legs in a car accident, and takes him to her home to convalesce. She fawns over Sheldon, a writer of romance novels starring her favorite literary character, Misery Chastain; she professes to be his "number one fan" and says that she loves him. She also implies that she has visited the hotel where Sheldon finishes his novels as he was staying there. These statements, and the fact that she is not in a hurry to take him to a hospital, make Sheldon uneasy. He has studied psychological disorders as part of his research for the Misery series, and suspects early on that Wilkes is mentally unstable.

Wilkes is furious when she discovers Sheldon killed off Misery at the end of his latest novel. She tells him she has not called a hospital or told anybody about him, and makes a veiled threat on his life. She holds him captive in her home and subjects him to a series of physical and psychological tortures. She also forces him to burn the only copy of a novel he felt would put him back on track as a mainstream author, and then makes him write a new novel bringing Misery back to life. Sheldon writes the book as Wilkes wants, but bridles at her treatment of him and manages to sneak out of his room several times while she's away.