All About Eve (film) Characters

Margo Channing

Margo Channing is a legendary stage actress and the complicated protagonist of the story. An established and renowned leading lady, Margo is terrified of aging and being pushed out of the theater by a younger striver. Her insecurity is aggravated by the presence of Eve and the threat the young devotee poses to Margo's career and love life. Margo is short-tempered, bitchy, and aggressive. She is also charming and charismatic, with an intoxicating confidence and serious star power. When she is in the room, you cannot look at anyone else because she is so compelling and theatrical in her comportment. Eventually, she comes to trust her own power as a star, choosing the life of Bill's wife rather than the life of an affirmation-seeking leading lady.

Eve Harrington

Eve Harrington is introduced as a sincere, devoted fan of Margo Channing and her work. She has seen every one of Margo's performances and soon becomes Margo's hyper-attentive assistant. Eve's attentiveness belies a ruthless ambition, however, and her aims are hardly sincere. Eve wants to replace Margo, onstage and in her social circle, and will stop at nothing to ascend the ranks of the New York theater community. Eve manipulates her way into acting as Margo's understudy, stealing her acclaim, and becoming the recipient of the most coveted award in the industry. She is an amoral girl with an unsavory past. She seduces and seeks affirmation without thinking of the consequences. While Eve is a gifted actress, she has no heart.

Bill Sampson

Bill Sampson is a good-hearted and talented director, and Margo Channing's younger boyfriend. Bill directs plays starring both Margo and later, to her chagrin, Eve. Bill, like his friends, falls under Eve's charming spell and believes her false good intentions. He soon sees Eve's true colors when she attempts to seduce him after her stage debut. Bill is a good man, loyal to Margo, with a grounded sense of what is right.

Karen Richards

Karen is the wife of playwright Lloyd Richards and a close friend of Margo's. Karen is the first person to meet Eve, and she is captivated by the girl's single-mindedness and ambition. She helps Eve to climb the ranks of the theater industry, sometimes at Margo's expense. Having grown frustrated with Margo's harsh and aggressive attitude, Karen helps Eve become Margo's understudy and take over for her at a particular performance. Eventually, however, Karen sees through Eve's act when Eve tries to blackmail her to make sure she lands the lead in Lloyd's next show. Karen is one of the film's narrators, a duty she shares with Addison DeWitt. She is kindhearted, sweet, and helpful, but also impressionable and not particularly strong-willed. Karen also struggles with low self-esteem about the fact that she is not a creative person, but only married into a creative industry.

Lloyd Richards

Lloyd is Karen's husband and a very successful playwright. As Addison describes him, Lloyd is "commercially the most successful playwright in America...and artistically the most promising." He is a talented writer and a loving husband, but he falls prey to Eve's spell and becomes enamored of her when they begin working together on his new play. As Eve confides in Addison, Lloyd is ready to leave Karen for her soon. Lloyd has a big ego and is at times more clever than he is wise, as when he scolds Margo for her diva-like behavior after learning Eve is her understudy. He takes his role as playwright very seriously, almost as if he were some kind of god-like figure. As he sees it, his actors are only instruments, a notion which Margo—a powerful creative force in her own right—challenges.

Addison DeWitt

Addison DeWitt is the preeminent theater critic in New York. He shares narrating duties with Karen and like her, he too has no creative talents himself, but is very proximate to theater. As he puts it, "My native habitat is the Theater. In it I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the Theater." A smug and cynical man, Addison approaches everything with a knowing smirk and a witty one-liner. Bill, Margo, Lloyd and, Karen all resent his knowingness and his smarmy attitude. Like Eve, he is rather manipulative, and enjoys a hold on private information that threatens to destroy people's good standing in society. He is drawn to Eve's ambition and her raw talent, but he also knows her darkest secrets, which he holds over her almost sadistically, threatening to reveal her scandalous past to the public if she doesn't agree to be with him. Even though he is a critic, and has only a passive role in the theater world, he is perhaps the most power-hungry of all the characters.

Claudia Caswell

Addison's date to Bill Sampson's birthday party, Claudia Caswell is a beautiful but not very talented aspiring actress. After securing an audition at the party, Claudia does not act very well on the day of the audition, which causes her to get sick in the bathroom in the lobby of the theater.