Character Flaws: 10 Movie Examples and a List of 50 Flaws

Robert De Niro gained about 60 pounds to play Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. Nicolas Cage played a man drinking himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas. Jack Nicholson played a novelist who insults everyone he meets in As Good as It Gets. All three won Best Actor, and all three played a man ruled by one flaw.

That’s no accident. Flawed characters are the ones we can’t stop watching. This guide covers what a character flaw is, the three types, 10 flawed movie characters and a list of 50 flaws you can use.

What Is a Character Flaw?

A character flaw is a weakness that holds a character back from what they want. Merriam-Webster defines a flaw as “an imperfection or weakness and especially one that detracts from the whole or hinders effectiveness.” In a story, the flaw is what makes the character’s goal hard to reach, even when the plot isn’t in the way.

A flaw is a negative trait with a cost. Plenty of character traits are negative, like moody or sarcastic, without changing the story. A flaw does change it. Lightning McQueen’s arrogance loses him a race. Fred C. Dobbs’s greed gets him killed.

Writers also talk about character weaknesses and personality flaws. A weakness can be outside the character’s control, like a fear of heights. A flaw usually lives in their choices, which is why it’s so useful: the character can choose differently.

The 3 Types of Character Flaws

Most writers sort flaws into three types:

• Minor flaws are quirks that add color but don’t steer the story. Indiana Jones hates snakes. It makes for a great scene, but it doesn’t decide how Raiders of the Lost Ark ends.
• Major flaws shape the character’s choices and hurt them or others. Lightning McQueen’s arrogance drives the whole plot of Cars.
• Fatal flaws bring about the character’s downfall. The idea goes back to Aristotle’s Poetics, where the tragic hero falls through hamartia, an “error or frailty,” not through wickedness. In film, Fred C. Dobbs and Jake LaMotta both fall this way.

Every flaw on this list follows the same path. The character wants something, the flaw gets in the way, and the story puts them in a spot where they have to choose. What they choose is the ending.

10 Character Flaws Examples in Movies

These 10 character flaws examples count down from an arrogant race car to two proud, prejudiced people in Jane Austen’s England. Every entry names the flaw, what it costs and how the film did.

10) Cars (2006)

A rookie race car who thinks he can win alone gets stranded in a forgotten town on Route 66.

Lightning McQueen, voiced by Owen Wilson, calls himself a “one-man show.” His pit crew quits during an interview. In the season’s last race he refuses new tires, blows them on the final lap and ends up in a three-way tie. On the way to the tiebreaker in California, he falls out of his hauler, tears up the main road of Radiator Springs and gets sentenced to repave it.

The town teaches him humility, and so does Doc Hudson, a forgotten racing legend voiced by Paul Newman. In the tiebreaker, when Chick Hicks wrecks The King, McQueen stops just short of the finish line and pushes The King across. He gives up the Piston Cup and wins something better. The film is dedicated to co-writer Joe Ranft, who died in a car crash before it was released.

9) Liar Liar (1997)

A lawyer who lies for a living is cursed to tell the truth for 24 hours.

Fletcher, played by Jim Carrey, is a lawyer who breaks every promise he makes to his five-year-old son, Max. When he misses Max’s birthday party, Max wishes his dad couldn’t lie for one day, and the wish comes true. Fletcher’s whole life runs on lies, so the next 24 hours wreck him, starting with the big divorce case he’s in the middle of.

He wins the case anyway, on the truth, and then sees what the win will do to his client’s children. He objects to his own victory and ends up in jail for contempt. Then he races to the airport to stop Max and his ex-wife from moving away, and he’s hurt stopping the plane. The part was first thought of for Tom Hanks and Steve Martin.

8) Up in the Air (2009)

A man who fires people for a living, and lives out of a suitcase, finds out what all that distance has cost him.

Ryan, played by George Clooney, flies around the country firing people for companies too scared to do it themselves. On the side he gives talks telling audiences to empty their backpacks of possessions and relationships. His goal is ten million frequent flyer miles. A casual affair with another traveler, Alex, starts to change him.

He walks out of a speech in Las Vegas and flies to Chicago to surprise Alex, and finds her at home with her husband and children. She tells him he was an escape. He hits ten million miles on the way home, and it feels like nothing. Director Jason Reitman cast real people who’d recently lost their jobs, and 22 of them appear in the film.

7) Gran Torino (2008)

A bitter widower who hates his new neighbors ends up protecting them.

The film opens at the funeral of Walt’s wife. Walt, played by Clint Eastwood, is a Korean War veteran and retired Ford worker who sneers at his own sons, the young priest and the Hmong family next door. When a local gang pressures his teenage neighbor, Thao, into trying to steal Walt’s 1972 Gran Torino, Walt nearly shoots him.

Slowly, Walt grows closer to Thao and his sister Sue than to his own family. When the gang attacks Sue, Walt locks Thao in his basement so he can’t take revenge, and goes to face the gang alone and unarmed. He reaches into his jacket for his lighter, and they shoot him dead in front of witnesses. Most of the Hmong cast had never acted before.

6) The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Three broke Americans strike gold in the Mexican mountains, and one of them can’t stop counting.

Dobbs, played by Humphrey Bogart, is broke in Tampico when he teams up with a younger man, Curtin, and an old prospector, Howard. They find gold. The more they dig up, the more Dobbs suspects his partners want his share. When Howard leaves to help a village, Dobbs and Curtin turn on each other, and one night Dobbs shoots Curtin and takes all the gold.

Curtin survives. Dobbs doesn’t. Bandits kill him at a waterhole, think the gold dust is sand and dump it, and the wind blows it back into the mountains. Walter Huston won Best Supporting Actor as Howard, and his son John won Best Director and Best Screenplay. Bogart wasn’t nominated.

5) Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

A screenwriter who has lost everything goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death.

Ben, played by Nicolas Cage, is an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who has lost his family. When he’s fired, he burns his belongings and drives to Las Vegas. There he meets Sera, played by Elisabeth Shue, and they make a pact: she will never ask him to stop drinking.

Ben keeps his promise to himself, and it wrecks everything between them. Sera throws him out, then comes back when he calls, and he dies soon after. It’s the bleakest film on this list, and it doesn’t pretend the flaw can be fixed. The film was shot on Super 16mm in 28 days on a small budget, and Cage won Best Actor.

4) As Good as It Gets (1997)

A romance novelist who’s cruel to everyone starts falling for the only waitress who’ll serve him.

Melvin, played by Jack Nicholson, is a best-selling romance novelist who insults everyone he meets. In the first scene he drops his neighbor’s dog down the garbage chute. When his neighbor Simon is beaten in a robbery, Melvin is stuck looking after the dog, and he grows attached. He pays for the medical care of Carol’s sick son, so she’ll come back to work at his diner.

On a road trip to Baltimore, Carol asks for a compliment, and Melvin gives her the best one of her life: “You make me want to be a better man.” Then his mouth wrecks the evening again. By the end he has started to change, one step at a time. Nicholson won Best Actor, and Helen Hunt won Best Actress as Carol.

3) Raging Bull (1980)

A middleweight champion fights his way to the top, then loses everyone he loves outside the ring.

Jake, played by Robert De Niro, is a boxer whose jealousy has no limit. He batters an opponent his wife, Vickie, innocently called good-looking. He becomes convinced she’s cheating, even with his brother Joey, attacks Joey in front of his family and knocks Vickie down.

He wins the middleweight title and loses it. By the end he’s overweight, divorced and jailed, beating his head against a cell wall. The film closes in a dressing room, where he recites “I coulda been a contender” to a mirror. De Niro gained about 60 pounds for the later scenes. He won Best Actor, and Thelma Schoonmaker won for editing.

2) The Conversation (1974)

A surveillance expert who records other people’s secrets can’t stand anyone knowing his own.

Harry, played by Gene Hackman, is the best surveillance man in San Francisco, and he guards his own privacy like a vault. He’s furious that his landlord has a key. Haunted by an old job that got people killed, he records a young couple in Union Square and hears a line that convinces him they’ll be murdered.

He tries to protect them and gets it backwards. He has misheard the stress on a single word in the tape, and the couple were the killers all along. Then he learns he’s being bugged himself. He tears his apartment apart looking for the device, finds nothing, and sits in the wreckage playing his saxophone. It won the Palme d’Or and lost Best Picture to Coppola’s own The Godfather Part II.

1) Pride & Prejudice (2005)

A sharp-tongued young woman and a proud rich man misjudge each other, then have to admit it.

At a country dance, Elizabeth, played by Keira Knightley, overhears Mr. Darcy, played by Matthew Macfadyen, being rude about her. She decides on the spot that he’s proud and unpleasant, then readily believes a charming officer, Wickham, when he says Darcy cheated him. When Darcy proposes, he spends half the proposal on how far beneath him her family is. She turns him down.

His letter tells her the truth about Wickham, and she sees her own prejudice. He sees his pride. When Wickham runs off with her youngest sister, Darcy quietly fixes it, and the second proposal comes at dawn. It’s the purest example of flaws driving a story, because the flaws are in the title, and both characters beat theirs. Joe Wright made it as his first feature.

Every film on this list runs on its flaw. Here’s how they did.

Leaving Las Vegas turned about $4 million into nearly $50 million, the biggest return here. Gran Torino made 11 times its budget. Raging Bull had the smallest return, a little more than its budget in the US, and is now one of the most acclaimed films on the list.

Eight of the 10 films earned Oscar nominations. Three of the men on this list won Best Actor for playing a flawed character: De Niro, Cage and Nicholson.

A List of 50 Character Flaws

Here’s a character flaws list you can use, grouped by how the flaw shows up: in how a character treats others, how they handle their feelings, and what they’re willing to do.

Social Flaws

Flaw	What it means
Arrogance	Believes they’re better than everyone
Rudeness	Ignores basic manners and courtesy
Bigotry	Hostile to people of other groups
Prejudice	Judges people before knowing the facts
Selfishness	Puts their own wants first
Manipulation	Uses tricks and pressure to steer people
Controlling	Must run everything and everyone
Tactlessness	Blurts hurtful things without thinking
Gossiping	Spreads other people’s private business
Misanthropy	Dislikes people in general
Disloyalty	Abandons friends when it suits them
Ingratitude	Takes kindness for granted
Neediness	Demands constant attention and reassurance
Bullying	Intimidates people weaker than them
Unreliability	Breaks promises and plans
Competitiveness	Must win, even at others’ expense
Vanity	Obsessed with their own looks and image

Emotional Flaws

Flaw	What it means
Jealousy	Fears losing someone’s love to a rival
Envy	Resents what other people have
Hot temper	Explodes at small provocations
Bitterness	Nurses old hurts and grudges
Paranoia	Believes others are plotting against them
Insecurity	Constantly doubts their own worth
Emotional detachment	Avoids closeness and deep feelings
Impatience	Can’t stand waiting
Impulsiveness	Acts first, thinks later
Anxiety	Worries constantly about what could go wrong
Self-pity	Wallows in their own misfortune
Perfectionism	Nothing is ever good enough
Obsessiveness	Fixates on one person or idea
Addiction	Can’t quit a harmful habit
Defensiveness	Treats every criticism as an attack
Stubbornness	Refuses to change their mind
Indecisiveness	Can’t commit to a choice

Moral Flaws

Flaw	What it means
Greed	Always wants more money or things
Lying	Habitually bends or hides the truth
Cruelty	Enjoys causing others pain
Callousness	Doesn’t care who gets hurt
Hypocrisy	Preaches what they don’t practice
Hubris	Thinks rules and limits don’t apply to them
Infidelity	Cheats on a partner
Cheating	Breaks the rules to win
Corruption	Abuses power for personal gain
Vengefulness	Pursues payback at any cost
Ruthlessness	Lets nothing stand in their way
Entitlement	Expects special treatment without earning it
Fanaticism	Follows a cause past reason or mercy
Stinginess	Hates to share or spend
Laziness	Dodges effort and responsibility
Cowardice	Abandons what’s right when it’s risky

How to Write a Flawed Character

A flaw only works if the story makes it matter. Here’s how to make yours count:

1. Tie the flaw to what they want. McQueen wants to win, and his arrogance is what stops him. Ryan wants freedom, and his detachment is what leaves him alone.
2. Show the flaw early and make it cost something. Melvin drops a dog down a garbage chute in the first scene. We know exactly who he is.
3. Decide whether they beat it or fall to it. Elizabeth and Darcy beat theirs. Dobbs and LaMotta don’t. Either ending works, but it has to be earned. Our guide to the character arc covers both, and our guide to internal conflict shows how a flaw fights the character from the inside.

FAQs About Character Flaws

The Final Cut on Character Flaws

A character flaw is the weakness that stands between a character and what they want. Minor flaws add color, major flaws drive the plot and fatal flaws end it. The best flawed characters either beat their flaw or fall to it, and either way, we can’t look away.

What’s the flaw at the heart of the character you’re writing? And does your story make them pay for it?

For more on building characters, see our guides to character traits, the anti-hero and character development.