Annie Wilkes is the antagonist of the 1987 novel Misery, by Stephen King.

A nurse by profession, she lives in a house in the mountains near Sidewinder, Colorado, a fictional town (although the real town of Silver Creek, in Grand County, is mentioned as nearby). Although she was married for a short period of time, her husband left her and she has no friends or family. She retired from working after being tried and acquitted of the murders of several newborns in a Boulder, Colorado hospital, where she was the head maternity nurse.

Annie is a serial killer, responsible not only for the deaths of the infants in Boulder, but also over thirty other victims, including the children of her childhood neighbors, her college roommate, an artist she once slept with, and even her own father. She mainly murders old and sick patients in the hospitals where she works, but occasionally targets other acquaintances if she views them as a threat. While Annie documents every death meticulously in a scrapbook, she is extremely careful to hide the evidence and has never been convicted or even suspected of most of the murders.

She has an unhealthy obsession with romance novels, particularly the Misery series written by Paul Sheldon. She often has difficulty in differentiating between these novels and reality.

She abhors profanity, to the point that she will fly into violent fits of rage if it is used in front of her. She instead expresses anger with childishly strange words like "cockadoodie" , "dirty bird" or "dirty birdie". Annie is paranoid, mentally unstable and frequently flies into unexpectedly violent tantrums over insignificant matters, most of which involves Paul's writing (or hate for the profanity in it). Wilkes initially saves Sheldon when he is crippled in a car accident and takes him to her home to convalesce. When she discovers the ending of Sheldon's latest Misery novel, which she strongly disagrees with, she subjects the bedridden novelist to a series of physical and psychological tortures. She holds him captive in her home and forces him to write a new novel according to her wishes. When his broken leg heals, she re-hobbles him so he will not try to escape again. Knowing Wilkes will kill him eventually, Sheldon writes the new novel as she wants and pretends to go along with her plans, but then overpowers and kills her. He does this by dropping a typewriter on her head. He is then rescued by police.

In the 1990 film, Annie Wilkes was portrayed by Kathy Bates, who won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal.

The American Film Institute included Annie Wilkes in their "100 Heroes and Villains" list, where she ranked seventeenth out of the fifty villains presented. Her character in many ways conformed to the stereotype of the "battleaxe" nurse.

See also

• Nurse stereotypes

Fictional nurses | Fictional characters with mental illness | Film villains | Literature villains | Film characters | Stephen King characters | Fictional people from Colorado