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| “ | You should thank me. Artists are always appreciated more after they're dead! | „ |
| ~ Taylor while trying to kill David Shaw. |
Steven Taylor is the main antagonist in the 1998 film A Perfect Murder.
A Perfect Murder is a loose remake of the 1950 Alfred Hitchcock film Dial M For Murder; as such, Taylor can be considered analogous to that film's villain, Tony Wendice.
He was portrayed by Michael Douglas, who also played Gordon Gekko in the Wall Street duology, William Foster in Falling Down, Steven R Hardin in The Star Chamber, Detective Nick Curran in Basic Instinct, and Yellowjacket in What If...?.
Biography[]
Taylor is a Wall Street hedge fund manager who lives a wealthy lifestyle with his much younger trophy wife, Emily. However, Taylor's illegal investments have caught up with him without his wife knowing, and in order to keep hold of his perfect lifestyle, he plans to obtain Emily's own fortune of $100 million.
It soon emerges that Taylor treats his wife as an object rather than a person and is very controlling over her, which tends to aggravate her at times. Due to this, she ends up having an affair with a supposed painter named David Shaw, whom Taylor eventually meets. Taylor is already fully aware of the affair and confronts David over it in his apartment, as well as blackmailing him with information about his real name and criminal record, but then reveals his intentions to offer David $500,000 in exchange for killing Emily. Being in love with her, David at first dismisses the idea and asks Taylor why he thinks he won't go straight to the police. Taylor then tells him that he knows that David is an ex-convict, with photographs to prove it. David already has two strikes against him and a third would send him to prison for fifteen years without parole, and so he decides to accept the offer.
David later goes to Taylor's apartment where Taylor shows him the best way to murder Emily. He says that he will call Emily at exactly 10:00 pm while he is at a poker game, wanting to hear over the phone that she is in fact dead. Taylor leaves David a key and leaves for the poker game, but David instead has someone else attack Emily in his place. Taylor hears Emily being attacked on the phone but she managed to kill her attacker by stabbing him in the neck with a sharp kitchen appliance. When Taylor gets home, he finds a distraught Emily cowering beside the bed and tried to make it look like a break-in as the police arrive. Taylor quickly becomes a suspect in the attack, especially after Emily's fortune is brought to attention.
Thereafter David phones Taylor and reveals that he had recorded Taylor's voice while he was explaining his plan to have Emily killed. Despite having not carried out his side of the bargain, Taylor is forced to give David his $500,000 or else he will take the tape to the police. However, Taylor follows David onto a train and kills him with a knife before taking the tape. When he gets home, he puts the tape in his safe but Emily finds it, having discovered that the code is the same as the date of their marriage. As she goes to leave him, Taylor attacks her, but she pulls out a gun and shoots him twice in the chest, killing him.
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