You’ve probably seen The Talented Mr. Ripley — or at least, I hope you’ve watched that cinematic classic from 1999, one of the best movie years of all time. And you may already be looking forward to Andrew Scott of “Hot Priest” fame playing the eponymous grifter in the Netflix series Ripley later this year. But did you know there have already been five Tom Ripley films based on multiple Patricia Highsmith novels? Matt Damon, John Malkovich, Dennis Hopper, Barry Pepper, and French actor Alain Delon have all taken on the role, each putting their own spin on a con man who fastidiously covers up his schemes with a little homicide.
Penned from 1955 all the way to 1991, the original Highsmith books — The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water — each depict Ripley as a calculating sociopath whose sophistication serves as his greatest alibi. Surely a man who seems so well-heeled wouldn’t strangle anybody! One of the most widely known literary characters, Ripley is often coded as gay through subtle references and allusions, but Highsmith never confirmed that’s how she saw the character, and even said in a late-in-life interview, “I don’t think Ripley is gay,” adding that while he “appreciates good looks in other men,” he may just not be “very strong in the sex department.” But authorial intention doesn’t matter as much as what’s on the page, which explains why some adaptations are quite queer and others aren’t.
Who is the gayest version of Ripley ever put on screen? Given the forthcoming TV series, and all the Saltburn-adjacent interest in homoerotic class climbing in a dark academia setting, I have been immersing myself in the Ripley-verse to find out if we’ve been sleeping on any of the lesser known portrayals. None of these movies are officially connected to each other, and some of them present radically different versions of the character, but they all treat us to the simple pleasures of watching a handsome man do terrible things. You might think the bathtub scene in the ’99 version is about as queer as Ripley can get (and yes, Saltburn’s bathtub scene was almost certainly inspired by that one), but that’s not necessarily the case.
Below, I’ve ranked all the Tom Ripleys in film history from straightest to gayest, beginning, unsurprisingly, with a mid-2000s entry.
5. Barry Pepper as Tom Ripley in Ripley Under Ground (2005)
As a queer millennial who was deeply closeted in the 2000s, let me try to impress something on younger Them readers: Anytime you went to the movies, you were basically guaranteed to hear the wrong kind of F-bomb. You’d walk into a rom-com like 2005’s Just Friends only for a homophobic slur to pop up almost immediately — and that’s just the tip of the casually homophobic iceberg that was aughties mainstream cinema. So is it really any surprise that the Tom Ripley of 2005 is a swaggy straight guy who makes sarcastic quips like “accidents happen” when he pulls off one of his depraved plots?
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s second Ripley novel, Ripley Under Ground follows Tom as he convinces an artist’s inner circle to sell forgeries of his paintings after his death. It’s a complicated scheme that involves forgery, impersonation, and murder, which are all of Ripley’s specialties, minus one very important ingredient: homoeroticism. Indeed, this Ripley is red-blooded through and through, bedding a French heiress and only ever putting his arm around another man once that I counted in my rewatch. The only truly gay thing about this adaptation is Alan Cumming’s portrayal of the deceased artist’s gallerist. Lines like “Cocaine was invented for times like this” or “Darling, if I were any higher, I’d be talking to Jesus” are the only queer pleasures on tap here.
4. Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley in The American Friend (1977)
There’s not much to relay on the gay front in Wim Wender’s The American Friend, an adaptation of a Highsmith novel we’ll talk about in more detail later in this list. It is, however, a fantastic film, a gorgeously shot neo-noir made during a decade when audiences had attention spans longer than five seconds. But is it homoerotic? Not so much. As critic Steve Erickson noted, this entry in the Ripley-verse “ditches the novel’s erotic underpinnings,” focusing instead on the subtle “contagion” of violence. If I were forced to locate queerness somewhere, I’d pick the scene of Ripley taking selfies with a Polaroid on a pool table, which gives me major “feeling depressed on Grindr” vibes.
3. Alain Delon as Tom Ripley in Purple Noon (1960)
This French adaptation was made just five years after The Talented Mr. Ripley was published and proved to be a breakout hit for actor Alain Delon. It’s easy to see why: he’s absolutely dripping with charisma in the role. While the homoerotic subtext isn’t quite as pronounced as the 1999 film, glimmers of it still shine through in moments like the famous sailboat peeping scene. But what rockets Plein Soleil up the gayness charts is Tom Ripley’s overall aesthetic. This is certainly the twinkiest take on Ripley, which is not really an adjective I’d apply so readily to Matt Damon’s performance. And throughout much of this movie, Delon’s Ripley rocks a French tuck, the look that Queer Eye’s Tan France basically turned into a religion.
2. Matt Damon as Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Whether you loved Saltburn or loathed it, you have to admit that it is essentially Talented Mr. Ripley fan fiction. (Maybe you think it’s very good fan fiction, but it doesn’t forge much new ground.) And there can really be no substitute for the homoeroticism of every charged interaction between Ripley (Matt Damon) and Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) in this remarkably nuanced psychological thriller that inspired countless imitators. Anthony Minghella’s adaptation makes the grifter’s gayness all but text, showing Ripley asking to join Dickie in the bathtub, and even including a male lover in its third act, though the relationship is never outright specified. At his core, this incarnation of Ripley wants to be gay in Italy, own expensive art, and play the piano — and if he has to crack a few skulls to live that life, so be it. Who among us wouldn’t murder someone for a gorgeously appointed Rome apartment?
1. John Malkovich as Tom Ripley in Ripley’s Game (2002)
The 1999 film may have more direct moments of Ripley lusting after men, but nothing tops the sheer flamboyance of John Malkovich’s portrayal of the character in middle age. A beret-wearing art forger who has settled down in Italy with his beard wife Luisa (Chiara Caselli), Malkovich’s Ripley is almost always filmed wearing a cravat, even while riding a bicycle around his meticulously decorated villa. Based on the third Highsmith novel in the series, this film has perhaps the gayest premise of all time: an acquaintance slights Ripley at a party and so Ripley decides to destroy his entire life, in this case by pressuring him into a murder-for-hire scheme. But when he’s not garroting mobsters in a train car, this Ripley can’t help but ooze homosexual. He’s shown sewing in a robe while perched on red silk sheets and baking a soufflé that prompts Luisa to label him “the perfect housewife.” But this Ripley’s most iconic and Exclusively Gay Moment™ comes when someone asks him “Who are you?” to which he quickly responds “I’m a creation.” If that’s not a Drag Race entrance line, I don’t know what is.
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