It's hard to believe it, but Oscar-winning actor Octavia Spencer did not have her first lead role until 2019's Ma. While the movie, also directed by The Help's Tate Taylor, was no critical darling, it wasn't a waste of her phenomenal talents altogether. 

The overwhelming consensus was that Octavia gave a solid performance as Sue Ann Ellington, a role that would have gone to a white actor. 

Sue Ann is a twisted version of the Cool Mom, a larger-than-life parental figure with a hidden, murderous agenda. Here's how you can look like the meme-tastic, vengeful villainess for Halloween.

Octavia's Ma costume is easy enough to pull off. A veterinary technician, Sue Ann is seen in floral scrubs that she covers with a purple knit cardigan. She pairs them with a pair of pink pants. 

In one famous scene, Sue Ann is the life of the party with her newsboy cap and matchy-matchy maroon pants and blouse, with huge bangles thrown in for good measure. 

But the topper of Ma's ensemble? It's her signature black bob, which you can copy with a wig. 

Spoiler alert: Ma is what happens when bullying intersects with racial prejudice. Sue Ann's actions will never be justifiable, but it's a villain origin story that demands to be seen. 

And hey, it's never too late to be cool, kids. Ha, ha!

 

Nurse Mildred Ratched is one of cinema's most famous characters, and deservedly so. 

The big baddie of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has been ranked the second-greatest villainess of all time by the American Film Institute, the character even netting Louise Fletcher a Best Actress Oscar. 

Let's just say this costume guide has been a long time coming. 

The story of the Mildred Ratched costume is the also the story of the nurse uniform. It has evolved a lot since the 1975 movie, so much so that hospitals and healthcare institutions have abandoned the iconic white cap-and-coat combo seen on Louise. Most have traded it for medical scrubs since the 90s. 

Nevertheless, the nurse cap endures today as a Halloween costume staple. You can easily make DIY nurse caps with nothing but paper. Here's how. 

If you want to copy the Sarah Paulson version of the villain, as seen on 2020's Ratched, get crafty with blue-green paper. (Or "surgical-green," as Ratched costume designer Rebecca Guzzi would say.)

The Netflix version of Nurse Ratched borrowed a silhouette from the 1940s, with lots of shoulder padding and cinched waists, and colored them all green. While it's not unusual to see nurses running around in green scrubs today, their post-WWII forebears traditionally wore white. 

To show creator Ryan Murphy, this anachronism was fitting: Green represented lust, envy, oppression and violence. 

The 1940s setting extends to Sarah's hair for Ratched. Here's how you can imitate her post-war updo, which fits snugly under a nurse cap.

In the 1975 film, Louise wears a variation of Victory rolls, among the most popular hairstyles of the 1940s, of course.

 

Red was pretty much forbidden from the Ratched set and makeup design except for two things: lipstick and blood. And not just any lipstick — makeup artist Eryn Krueger Mekash used Bésame on Sarah. 

While Nurse Ratched has somehow glamorized the image of the nurse, real healthcare practitioners have tried to push back against the stigma the character has brought to their profession over the decades. This just proves that Mildred is really bad medicine, even beyond the screen. 

Do you want to be a Disney villainess for Halloween but not one of the thousands of Maleficents, Cruella de Vils, and Ursulas on the streets? Helga Sinclair has you covered. 

The bad girl of Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) has one of the easiest villain costumes you can gun for (no pun intended) this season.  

All you need to cosplay Helga is a white tank top, paired with olive-green military or cargo pants. Or a dark turtleneck, paired with tight-fitting tan pants. Earlier in the movie, she also wears a military-green coat.

To complete Helga's femme fatale look, wear a buscadero or Western holster that will not look out of place in 1914. 

You can also accessorize with brown or black gloves and knee-high boots. 

Helga has blond locks that she French-braids to the side, just like another strong female character who came out in theaters in 2001: Lara Croft. 

Helga also has a triangular mole under her left eye, something you can easily draw on yourself, like her arched brows. (With practice, of course.) 

Her lipstick color of choice appears to be a shade of ruby red. She also has avariciously green eyes, so go make that trip to the optometrist for a nice pair of contacts. 

It also helps to walk over to the nearest gym and get yourself some toned Helga arms to show off with your tank top. 

Yes, she came down the chimney. Yes, she betrayed people in the movie. Lots of people. Yes, Atlantis could have used a bigger audience. But, yes, she came to slay.

There have now been 14 actresses who played Wednesday Addams, the notoriously stoic, helplessly truth-telling daughter of Gomez and Morticia Addams. 

Little more than an editorial cartoon character on The New Yorker in the 1930s, Charles Addams' creation has taken on a life of her own and become a style icon over the years. With her bewitchingly funereal looks, Wednesday has inspired generations to wear their gothic fits with pride, on and beyond Halloween.   

The Gen-Z Wednesday Addams, Jenna Ortega, has only added to the character's diversifying legacy of fashion statements. Let's see how the 2020s Wednesday differs from her predecessors. 

Lisa Loring and Christina Ricci are tough acts to follow as Wednesday, but Jenna still made the character her own. Costume designer Colleen Atwood went beyond the cartoon's famed peter pan collars and dressed Jenna in a wide array of OOTDs to last Wednesday and every day of the week. 

Jenna's Rave'N dance dress is now the stuff of legends, thanks in part to legendary music from The Cramps. Atwood famously spotted the Alaïa dress on a mannequin along Bond Street in London. The sheer fabric, ruffles and layers really lent themselves well to movement required of the dancing scenes. 

The Alaïa dress was just a one-off, but enterprising souls have since come up with affordable imitations of the outfit, even down to the cinching belt.  

A Wednesday Addams costume is traditionally paired with brogues or Mary Janes, but Jenna's version has become associated with Prada monolith loafers and Doc Martens Jadon boots. In Colleen's words, she had to wear "black, kind of goth shoes that were still feminine, but had a different edge to the other people's footwear."

Wednesday is also synonymous with pigtail braids. Tara McDonald, who did hair and makeup for the Netflix show, still stuck to that iconic imagery, but every once in a while she surprised with her own twist, literally, to Wednesday's hair.

In the Rave'N dance scenes, for example, Tara styled Jenna's locks as milkmaid braids. You can pull off this hairstyle, too. 

Tara's go-to war paint for Wednesday's eternally half-dead look was an arsenal of MAC products: eyeshadows, sculpting powders, and the now-famous Nightmoth lip pencil (mixed with Dr. Paw Paw's cruelty-free multipurpose balm). 

She also let Jenna's freckles go au naturel. Don't have them? You can follow this advice.

It wouldn't be a complete Wednesday Addams cosplay guide without learning her famous "Goo Goo Muck" dance steps. Master them and find yourself the creepy, kooky, ooky belle of the ball. 

  

Bianca and Bernard might be mice, but Madame Medusa is a rat. 

Or a crocodile. 

Or both.

The pawnshop owner that everyone loves to hate is probably one of Disney's most underrated villains. This, despite the House of Mouse calling her "the world's wickedest woman" during promo for The Rescuers. 

She does have a wicked sense of style. What she lacks in infamy compared to villains like Cruella de Vil, she more than makes up for in the looks department. 

If Madame Medusa reminds you a bit of Cruella, that's definitely not a coincidence. The animators initially considered reusing Cruella's designs for Madame Medusa, so this could explain the latter's similarly short fuse, reckless driving, and great penchant for abduction. 

The diamond-crazed kidnapper is known for her red halter dress and pink high heels (with the occasional fur -trimmed coat) that scream late 1970s. She also favors jade earrings.  

For a dash of realism to your Madame Medusa act, carry around a rotary dial phone and a cane. 

Diamonds are a girl's best friend