Anton Chigurh () is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country for Old Men. In the film adaptation of the same name, he is portrayed by Javier Bardem. Bardem's performance as Chigurh was widely lauded by film critics—he won an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award and a British Academy Film Award for the role. Other accolades include Chigurh's presence on numerous Greatest Villain lists, most notably in Empire Magazines list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, in which he was ranked #44, as well as being named the most realistic film depiction of a psychopath by an independent group of psychologists in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. Character overview Chigurh is devoid of conscience, remorse, and compassion. He is described by Carson Wells, a central character in the novel, as a "psychopathic killer", in his 30s, with a dark complexion. Other characters describe Chigurh's facial features as "exotic looking". His signature weapon is a captive bolt stunner, which he uses to kill his victims and also as a tool to shoot out door locks. He also wields a sound-suppressed Remington 11-87 semiautomatic shotgun and pistol (as well as a TEC-9 in the film adaptation). Throughout both the novel and the film, Chigurh flips a coin to decide the fate of some of his victims. Creation The character is a recurrence of the "Unstoppable Evil" archetype frequently found in Cormac McCarthy's work, though the Coen brothers wanted to avoid one-dimensionality, particularly a comparison to The Terminator. To avoid a sense of identification, the Coens sought to cast someone "who could have come from Mars". The brothers introduced the character at the beginning of the film in a manner similar to the opening of the 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth. Film critic David DuBos described Chigurh as a "modern equivalent of Death from Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film The Seventh Seal." When Joel and Ethan Coen approached Javier Bardem about playing Chigurh, he replied, "I don't drive, I speak bad English and I hate violence." The Coens responded, "That's why we called you." Bardem said he took the role because it was his dream to be in a Coen Brothers film. The Coen brothers got the idea for Chigurh's hairstyle from a book Tommy Lee Jones had. It featured a 1979 photo of a man sitting in the bar of a