CREATED BY: English folklore
FIRST APPEARANCE: Earliest known references date to 14th century
AREAS OF INFLUENCE: Posterity has been exceptionally kind to the mythic figure known as Robin Hood. The roguish bandit of 15th-century ballad has slowly transformed into a swashbuckling outlaw-hero portrayed, on the big screen, by such fine specimens of virile vitality as Errol Flynn (pictured), Sean Connery, Kevin Costner and Russell Crowe. It’s in the later versions of Robin Hood — the morally instructive creation of Victorian England — that we see him develop into figure we know today: the renegade re-distributor of wealth, who “steals from the rich and gives to the poor.”
Are we missing your favorite fictional character?
Click here to see—and vote on—our expanded list.